


litany in which certain things are crossed out

by nokomisfics, recklessfishes



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (pretty sure that is an actual tag on here lmao), M/M, Phandom Big Bang, Sadness, Slash Fiction, Smut, aka the smuttiest scenes i've ever written, phandom big bang 3, stupid boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 23:40:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4938397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nokomisfics/pseuds/nokomisfics, https://archiveofourown.org/users/recklessfishes/pseuds/recklessfishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan has a List, and he has a dingy flat with a broken heater, and a bunch of papers with half-formed ideas on them. And then one day, he has a Phil. Inspired by Litany in which Certain Things are Crossed Out (poem) by Richard Siken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	litany in which certain things are crossed out

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Phandom Big Bang Round 3, with my darling kate. 
> 
> authors' notes:
> 
> this fic has been a journey, to put it lightly. it brought me closer to my co-author, nokomis (hell yeah for friendship!!) and spanned several important stages of my life. it saw me grow as a writer and explore new territory, saw several drafts and crappy poems before its completion, and ended up being a conglomeration that is both completely different from how it was first written and exactly how it should be. I am incredibly proud of this story, and I hope you love it as much as I do. <3  
> \- kate
> 
> honestly, this is the best thing i have ever written. it started when i saw a prompt on phanfic, and then read the poem of the same name by Richard Siken (you can read it here, and i highly recommend that you do) & i knew at once that i needed to write a fic about it, and who else to do it with but kate? for the longest time this fic was in fragments (it spanned over 12 google docs in total, oh my god) but i’m proud of the way we brought things together just in time for posting. this fic has been in the makings since February, and i am so excited for you guys to read it. i want to thank kate for contributing her beautiful poems to this fic, and for being a ridiculously fun co-writer. i want to thank Avani, our beta, for putting up with the mess that was this fic when she first came to work with us, and for her useful and insightful suggestions. and, of course, gratitude to Hannah our artist for the beautiful beautiful art that you can access on her tumblr, sunshinehowelll (please send her love!). and lastly, have fun reading this fic! here are some tissues, just in case.  
> \- nokomis

 

* * *

 

Dan would have wagered it wasn’t a good sign if his head was pounding before he even got to the party, but in order to do that he’d have to actually  _think_. And thinking is on the List of Things Dan Howell Should Avoid Doing Tonight. So he doesn’t think of his incessant headache, nor of the warning his Language professor gave him right after today’s lecture, and he  _certainly_  doesn’t think of how sluggish his body feels even while sober.

It’s easy once he’s there, leaning against the wall in somebody’s living room with somebody else’s sweaty, intoxicated body rubbing against his own. The music is loud and finally provides a reasonable excuse for his head to pound. He’s holding a shot glass in one hand and batting away the freshman who insists on giving him an upright lap dance with his other and this, Dan reckons, is about as good as it gets.

After a few minutes of drinking and batting, he pushes away from the wall and approaches the kitchen tucked away in a corridor. There are people in here too, loud voices and the sound of drinks sloshing into glasses making for a painfully familiar serenade. Emery is here, leaning against the silver refrigerator and laughing loudly about something somebody has said.

Dan sets his shot glass on the table and looks at Emery intently. The blonde boy meets his gaze with an arched eyebrow. “Having a good time, Howell?” he slurs.

Dan doesn’t reply. Instead, he presses up against Emery and dips to suck a bruise onto his neck. Howls of laughter come from somewhere behind him, followed by somebody patting Emery roughly on his shoulder and the sounds of footsteps leaving the kitchen.

“Nice,” says Emery, his head tipped back and his voice a little bit strained. “Didn’t think you’d be up for it tonight.”

Dan raises his head to give Emery one of his most sarcastic faces. “You really shouldn’t think,” he comments. “It doesn’t suit you.”

But Emery just grabs the back of his head and presses it against his neck. “Less talking,” he gasps out, “More biting.”

And the thing is, this moment right here with Emery in the kitchen of some faceless sophomore’s family condo is happening right now, but it may as well have happened yesterday, or a week ago, or at the first party Dan had ever attended after he joined Manchester Uni. Because all of them end like this: Dan slipping out of a house now littered with post-party detritus, the effects of all the alcohol he’s consumed eventually giving away to the gaping hole in his head where his thoughts should be as he leaves behind a drunk Emery, passed out on a bed or couch or carpet, wrecked from another night of being thoroughly fucked.

And today is no different.

After the party, at four in the morning when the sky feels the blackest and even the birds are sitting still, Dan wanders the streets of Manchester, telling himself furiously and repeatedly not to think. Nothing of consequence would come out of that. At five, his brain shuts down. He ducks into an alleyway, buries his head in an alcove between his hands and the bricked wall, and screams till his throat is raw.

Then he crosses the park and runs into the apartment block on the other side, takes the steps two at a time till he’s standing outside his flat, fishing for his keys, stepping in. The heater is off. He falls face-first into the couch, kicks off his boots but leaves his leather jacket on, and in the limbo between being awake and being not, he wonders fleetingly if Emery will ever make it to the List of Things Dan Howell Should Avoid Doing Tonight.

+

Dan remembers the time he got his first tattoo. He remembers stumbling into the shop on an impulse at an oddly normal hour of the morning, body still high from a joint he’d smoked before deciding to walk the streets. He remembers walking up to the counter deliriously and demanding in a voice that would have immediately given away his level of sobriety, “What hurts more - a tattoo or a piercing?”

He’d sat himself down on a stool in front of a mirror only moments later, right after presenting his license for the tattoo lady’s perusal. “Alright then, Dan,” she said, settling in front of him holding something Dan thought looked like an ink gun. “What sort of marks wouldja like me to put on your body?”

Dan remembers mumbling something about abstract words like  _fear_  and  _destiny_  carved in some exotic Indian script into the back of his shoulder, the dip of his collarbone. The tattoo lady then asked him for his birth date, and began inking the symbol of a Gemini onto his side, right over his hip.

Dan thinks now that if he’d been so desperate to feel the dull thud of detached pain back then, he should have just waited until today. Until this moment in his third year of university when his Language professor is looking at him in despair, saying, “I’m really sorry, Daniel, but I can’t entertain behaviour such as yours in my classes any more,” and telling him to kindly exit the lecture hall, kindly turn in this dismissal slip at the office.

He knows he should have seen it coming, and yet he feels like he’s been cheated. After nearly three years of skipping classes systemically and studying selectively to pass his courses - nothing more, nothing less - he’s fucked it up. He might as well drop out now, with all the good obtaining his degree will do him with an incomplete course on his tally.

He walks through the months leading up to December in a daze. On the last day of classes before they break for Christmas, there’s a thick layer of snow on every available surface in the city. The temperature might be, in all seriousness, nothing more than negative three degrees Celsius, and Dan’s chosen form of protective wear is nothing more than his trusty leather jacket.

He’s one of the first to stride out of the lecture hall when the Creative Writing professor dismisses them, probably hoping to invigorate them with holiday cheer when he shouts to their departing backs, “Aspire to inspire, dear friends, and in turn - be inspired!”.

Outside the gates of the university stands a maple tree, its usually reddish orange leaves topped with a coat of white. Dan stands underneath it now, fetching a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and lighting it up. He watches the people walking by, watches them talk excitedly about their plans for the festive season, hears them lament about long but necessary train journeys and inconvenient family dinners.

When the cig has been reduced to a stub, he stamps it out and bends to pick up a fallen maple leaf, dry and brown and buried under even more snow. He pulls out a blue gel pen from his pocket and pulls the cap out with his teeth. Then he presses its nib to the leaf, writes out the date and under that, the words:  _aspire to inspire_.

He drops it to the ground, and a gust of wind carries it away.

+

There is, predictably, a party tonight. Dan nips home first, changes into a saffron jumper and skinny jeans just a shade darker than the ones he’s worn to uni, and of course his leather jacket. The address that’s been texted to him is located at the opposite end of Manchester, in a pub rented out for the sole purpose of the end-of-term celebration.

Dan walks there.

He’s begun walking everywhere, which he would have attributed to the insatiable desire to become fit when in fact it is because, most of the time, he can’t quite afford the taxi fare. And train cards. He can’t really afford anything anymore without compromising on food. He had a job once, at a grocery store not far from his flat. He didn’t resign - he just stopped going.

Dan arrives at the party three hours after it began. Seated on a barstool and waiting for his first drink of the night to arrive, he wonders idly how parties even start, given how he’s arrived late to every one he’s been invited to. Do they sit around first, making conversation and forcing out laughs? Do they take to the dance floor immediately? Do they show up intoxicated, to avoid the awkwardness that sobriety would otherwise provide?

The barman sets a glass of vodka down in front of him. Taking it in his hands, he swivels around on the stool and watches the party leisurely. There is nothing new to observe; sweaty bodies dancing and grinding against each other on the dance floor, brooding figures in the corners staring at the dance floor and sharing joints, loud parties of eight to ten girls at the far end of the bar laughing loudly and downing drinks like their lives depend on it. Dan wants to walk out; for a second he is convinced he  _needs_  to. But when he gets to his feet his head spins and he stumbles forward. No, wandering the streets seven hours before four in the morning is going to go on the List of Thing Dan Howell Should Avoid Doing Tonight. He downs the rest of his drink and leaves the empty glass on the bar, not bothering to cover the cost.

His legs are considerably steady as he skirts the border of the dance floor, making for the toilets. Once inside, Dan notices the grimy floor and brown basins and his stomach turns. He exits it, leaning against the nearest wall and stuffing his balled-up fists into the pockets of his jacket. It might be just him, but he’s certain the music has become louder. And he usually has a higher tolerance for alcohol on days when it feels like the floor is simultaneously rising and giving away, but he mentally adds more glasses of vodka to the List.

Well. There will always be tequilas.

By the time he starts looking for Emery, he is considerably pissed. People have begun to give him strange, oddly concerned looks when he slumps against the bar, the harsh lights in his face only emphasising how dark it must be outside.

Emery is not here and Dan wants to scream. No, he wants to forget. He wants a warm body and a quick night, a sharp escape. Dan wants to be out, on the road. At home. On the couch. He wants to be  _in_  someone, panting from a euphoric high, coming down from a moment of ethereality he will forget not long after.

He is wrecked.

A fresh, flowery scent. A  _someone_ , slipping onto the barstool beside him. Blue eyes peeking at him from under a black fringe. “You a’ight, mate?”

Dan stares at him. Lean, almost scrawny. Look at those legs - tall, a reasonable amount. Soft eyes, crinkling at the edges. No, not the eyes. The lips: red, inviting. Hips: narrow, feminine. Yes, Dan thinks. This’ll do.

“You any good?” he rasps out, surprised by how hoarse his voice sounds.

“What?” Blue eyes: wide, startled.

Dan rolls his. “Any  _good_ ,” he repeats. He gives him a meaningful look.

“Oh!  _Oh_.” The boy’s cheeks colour.

Dan has to bite back a frustrated groan. The timidity of a virgin - he isn’t about to fuck with that. He makes for the door, eager all of a sudden for the fresh air of Manchester, the gentle buzz of a sleeping city, anything away from the sharp sting of a wasted night.

A soft hand on his wrist, tugging him backwards. “Wait.”

Dan wrenches his hand away, but turns around. The boy is on his feet now, and Jesus Christ is he hot, all narrow hips and broad chest and dark eyes, thick eyelashes. Dan raises an eyebrow lazily. “What?”

Dan watches him lick his lips and thinks,  _tease_. “I’m. Reasonably good. Or so I’ve been, uh. Told.”

"Sure you are," says Dan with a smirk. He knows he shouldn't, but Emery isn't here - which isn't his fault - and the boy in front of him looks appealing and desperate and, well, it  _would_  be rather rude to say no.

In a heady rush of anticipation, Dan grabs him by his wrist and ducks behind the bar, signaling for the boy to keep his head down. There is a door, and then steps going down behind the door. Dan shuts the door behind them before anyone can see them sneak into obviously forbidden territory, and they follow the steps down into a wine cellar, dark and cool and not too damp. The walls are thick and perforated and Dan pushes the boy against the closest one in the narrow hall beside a rack of red glass bottles.

"Your name," he says expectantly, between heavy breaths inches from those ridiculously inviting lips.

"Phil."

When Dan pins his complaint wrists to the wall over his head, Phil relaxes immediately. Dan smirks down at him, relishing the power that Emery usually doesn't allow him. "Submissive, are we?" he teases.

Phil just stares back at him, his pupils so dilated his blue eyes are almost black. Dan leans closer until he can smell, under that stupid fucking flowery scent, the thick musk of his arousal. That does it for him; in a moment his lips are on Phil's in the dirtiest snog he's had in a  _long_  time.

Jesus Christ, the sounds Phil's making should be illegal. Dan almost thinks he's just stolen the man's first kiss, but when he pulls back, Phil's mouth is red and swollen and panting and  _so fucking hot_  he knows it must have been kissed before.

Doesn't mean it doesn't belong to him right now.

He's grounded immediately by Phil seeking his lips greedily, something so wanton in his soft whimpering that it drives Dan mad. He pressed his body into Phil's and pushes the man plush against the wall, their erections now rubbing together painfully.

"I don't - shit," Phil gasps out when Dan moves his head down to mouth at his neck, covering all that pale unblemished skin with his tongue and teeth.

Dan shushes him impatiently, moving downwards and biting down on Phil's collarbone, and the man almost screams. Satisfied, Dan makes quick work of a pretty hicky on the skin there and then lowers his focus to unbutton Phil's jeans and pull down the zipper. He watches him arch against the wall and feels himself get even harder.

Dan can't quite recall the rest, which is how he prefers it. He remembers pulling two pairs of jeans and pants down to the ankles, he remembers hooking Phil's legs around his waist and relishing the feeling of having their cocks rub together, hot skin against hot skin. He remembers grabbing Phil's arse cheeks and spreading them, fingering a tight hole carefully; two fingers, three.

He whispers "is this okay?" into the curve of Phil's neck and then doesn't wait for an answer, struggling to stop his hips from bucking uncontrollably as he pushes into Phil slowly, inch by painstaking inch.

Phil is tight, clenches around him like a virgin ( _which he is_ , Dan reminds himself severely, shaking at the thought - he’s never had a virgin before, and it shouldn’t be as enticing as it really is). His hips buck before he can control them, and he’s about to apologize when Phil gasps out loudly and claws at Dan’s back pulling closer, and  _fuck_  this is far from Dan’s first time but it certainly feels like it.

Dan draws out and then thrusts in again, this time hitting the bundle of nerves that reduces Phil into a shaking mess, and Dan will later pride himself at knowing  _he’d_  been responsible for picking this shy virgin apart.

After that, it's just a frenzy of sweaty bodies and frantic thrusts and "oh God, there, right  _there_ " - "I've got you, I've got you, oh  _shit_ " and then Phil's coming across their shirts that are still on, and Dan's coming into a condom he doesn't remember pulling on.

When they've calmed down a reasonable bit, Dan drags his mouth up the side of Phil's neck to breathe heavily in his ear, and Phil whispers then in a thick and tired voice, "Who  _are_  you?"

"I'm a writer," Dan breathes, because in this moment it is true. "I write things down."

Dan is still inside Phil, and he can feel the man clench around him but has no desire to pull out just yet. He senses Phil regarding him in that closed, sensible way he's sure Phil regards most things. Then he says, "Your name."

"Dan."

"Dan what?"

"Dan Howell."

"Phil Lester."

"Okay." Dan's pulling out now, pulling his pants and jeans up and straightening out his shirt, trying very desperately not to commit the name to memory.

Phil's still slumped against the wall, naked from the waist down, when Dan steps back looking completely unruffled. "See you around," he says casually, running a hand through his hair. Phil doesn't stir, doesn't respond, just watches Dan with those bright eyes as he walks up the stairs. Even once he's out of Phil's view, he can feel those eyes on him as he walks around the bar, out of the pub and into the cold air of the streets.

When he finds his way back to the flat, the sun has begun to rise and Dan doesn't remember Phil Lester's name.

 

* * *

 

> _Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?  
>  _ _Let me do it right for once_

* * *

 

Dan has a quiet Christmas. It is cold but the streets are pretty so he stays out. Not least because the flat is empty and far too quiet. No, not at all. He goes to the pub and gets drunk, and then stumbles out without Emery, because he hasn’t met Emery in long and isn’t quite sure what to make of that. His vision is blurry and there aren’t any cars on the road. He reckons he can be forgiven for thinking this doesn’t feel like Christmas, not in the least.

And, well, if he thinks of blue eyes and pale skin and a voice tainted with a mild Northern accent whispering his name in a dark wine cellar, he reckons he could be forgiven for that, too.

He stays in the flat for the rest of the month, only venturing out when he runs out of joints and beer. It’s nothing different from the way he’s spent his last two Christmases, but he can’t shake off the feeling like it should’ve been different this time. He finds himself looking for warmth in the blankets that have run thin and in front of the heater that has long since stopped working. It’s nothing new, but he still feels torn.

When the university opens for the new year, he’s tempted to skip the first day. But he doesn’t, because he’s run out of money for beer and would really like to get the degree. Maybe on the way back after classes he’ll look for a job, too.

His schedule is freer now that he’s been banished from the Grammar course. In his empty three hours before Creative Writing, he sneaks into the library and wanders deep enough that the librarian won’t find him when she makes her rounds. He leans against the rack labelled Renaissance: Art, and fetches a cigarette from the pocket of his skinny jeans. He lights it up and sucks in a breath eagerly, desperate for the nicotine after two hours of being trapped in the lecture hall.

He’s just begun to lose himself in a cloud of smoke when he hears it.

“Pretty sure that’s not allowed.”

His head jerks upwards. Blue eyes, pale skin. Lilting Northern accent. Dan stumbles backwards. “No,” he says quietly.

“Hey.” Phil scratches the back of his neck. He’s standing at the end of the rack and looks ready to bolt. That’s one thing he and Dan have in common. “Fancy seeing you here.”

To say Dan is confused would be a bit of an understatement. “You - “

“I go here, yeah.” Phil grins sheepishly. “Studying Art and Interpretation. And I suppose you’re getting a degree in writing?”

“Yeah.”  _I’m a writer, I write things down._  Words Dan whispered in his post-coital high, words that Phil remembers.

Dan’s still trying to collect his thoughts. More importantly, he’s desperately thinking of a way out of the situation. But his eyes are fixed on Phil, who’s dressed in a green and red Christmas jumper and black skinny jeans, and definitely smells of something good even though he’s not close enough for Dan to confirm it. And everything sensible in Dan is telling him to make a run for it because this is not what he signs up for when he has casual sex with a stranger in a fucking wine cellar.  However, his legs seem to be in rebellion because they’re not walking away.

In his silence, Phil appears to have grown less sure of himself. “I’m Phil,” he offers up awkwardly, “In case you’ve forgotten. Um, I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, I wasn’t implying anything - I just - yes. Shutting up now.”

Dan gives him a half-smile. “I remember you,” he says casually, like he hasn’t been thinking of the man too often at certain delirious moments in the past month. “Philip Lester, innit?”  _Why_  is he still here?  _Why_  hasn’t he gone yet?

He doesn’t fucking know.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Phil laughs, then approaches him, and Dan sees now that he’s got a couple of books in his hands, all at least two inches thick. “Are you done with classes for the day?”

“I’ve got another one in three hours. Are you?” He returns the question for the sake of courtesy, his head still spinning.

“I am, just popped by here to pick up some reference books.” Phil pauses. “I’m going to the coffee shop later to look through some of them, would you like to come with?”

Dan studies him in a manner he hopes is discrete: his hair looks wet, his fringe dipping so low it falls into his eyes. He’s close enough now that Dan can confirm that he does, in fact, smell like something fresh and new. It takes him more than a moment to register the question. And then his mouth is open, and he’s fucking it all up.  “I’ve actually got to, um, meet a professor in his office around now, and then. Books and, uh, study group. So I’ll. See you around, or something, maybe.”

Phil’s blue eyes widen in alarm, and his cheeks immediately take on a faint reddish tinge. “Right, no. Of course. Don’t want to disturb you, just thought that would be - nice.”

It would be, Dan thinks, in a fleeting moment of detachment. And then he remembers that he can’t, and he shouldn’t. He really, really shouldn’t.

Phil says something about catching him later, and then he’s turning around and leaving, and Dan slumps against the rack behind him, his heart beating far too fast for him to still be alive.

It must be at least an hour later when Dan leaves the library, smelling of badly concealed nicotine and a frenzied desire to get away. He knows he’s got a class later, but he also knows it’s a class he can miss.

Outside, the maple tree is staring at him with something akin to disappointment. The frost on its leaves have worn off, something that never happens this early in the month, and Dan knows there’s probably a metaphorical meaning behind that but he can’t be arsed to dig it up. There are students loitering in front of the university, reading on the front steps and laughing on the grass, and Dan walks quickly in the direction of his apartment block, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket resolutely.

When he passes the coffee shop not too far from his flat and catches a glimpse of Phil inside, sitting at a table for two with one seat empty and his pretty head burrowed in a thick library book, he quickens his pace until he’s almost running home.

+

Dan’s had all kinds of dreams before. He’s had dreams that wake him up to wet pants and hips bucking upwards wantonly, desperately, and it’s never too hard to finish if he thinks of Emery underneath him, naked and helpless. He’s had dreams that disturb him to his wits’ end, dreams about somebody he’s seen fleetingly in one of his classes jumping off a bridge, tying a noose around their neck, digging gashes into their wrist. He’s even dreamt of his childhood: odd moments like playing in an empty park, falling from his cycle to scrape his knees and chasing down the middle of the road after a motorcycle recklessly.

The day after he meets Phil for the second time, Dan wakes up from a dream that leaves him terrified. He stumbles into the bathroom and splashes his face with ice-cold water, still unable to get out of his head the image of dream-Phil, peeking out of his kitchen, dressed in Dan’s black band t-shirt and checkered boxer shorts and saying, “How about some eggs for breakfast?” Hair messy, eyes twinkling,  _no_. Out. Get  _out_.

He only has one class today, in the afternoon, but he’s out of the flat before nine in the morning, and he’s left the leather jacket behind for once. He loiters around the university campus until it’s eleven, and then makes his way to the library and approaches the Renaissance section cautiously.

Phil is there.

He almost loses it, almost turns around and bolts.  But his traitorous legs stand their ground. He clears his throat loudly. “Hey.”

Phil’s head darts up from browsing a particularly fat reddish-brown hardback. He’s standing close enough to the rack that the tips of his hair brush the books in front of his face. His eyes find Dan’s without hesitation. “Hullo,” he says, sounding pleasantly surprised. He’s got glasses on today, black thick-rimmed ones that sit on his nose and make him look bookish but approachable.

“I was wondering if. Um. If the offer of coffee still stands.”

+

They don’t leave immediately. While Phil pulls out book after book to take with him (seven in all, which is the most any student is allowed to borrow at once) Dan watches from a safe distance with a cigarette between his lips, and then a second one, and then a third. They don’t break the silence, and it doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it should.

When they exit the library and make their way off the university campus, Phil says amiably, “Changed your mind?”

Dan already has an excuse intact. “Had a free day today.”

“Awesome.” Phil shoots him a sideways grin. “Are you a third-year?”

“Yeah.” Dan is so taken by the shy manner in which Phil’s talking to him, eyes shining but voice cautious, that he almost forgets his moral obligation to continue the conversation. “And you?”

“Final year.” Phil lifts up the books he’s carrying in his hand. “Should explain the obscure amount of studying I’ve been occupying myself with.”

“I dunno, I like to think you’ve been in a committed relationship with ‘em books for a while.”

“Prick,” Phil accuses, shoving Dan to the side laughingly. Dan rubs at his unusually bare arms as he watches Phil, easy and approachable and so very much there.

They make small talk (“The weather’s been friendly” -- “favourite video games?” -- “so what do you do when you aren’t neck-deep in those bloody books?”) until they reach the coffee shop on the outskirts of the campus. Dan pushes the glass door open and then stands to the side to let Phil in through first, and the action comes so easily to him that his head spins in a painful moment of good-fucking-lord-what-the-fuck-am-I-doing.

At the counter, Phil asks for a caramel macchiato and Dan finds that in itself a very attractive trait. He orders himself a black coffee and Phil’s button nose twitches at his choice. “What’s the matter?” quizzes Dan, “Not a black coffee person?”

“Not quite,” Phil responds as they move to the side to wait for their drinks. “It’s always struck me as a drink for sad people.”

Dan bumps his shoulder against Phil’s. “Maybe I am a sad people,” he suggests lightly.

Phil glances at him out of the corner of his eyes, and continues to regard him as their drinks arrive. “Dan and Phil?” calls out the barista unnecessarily. Dan’s so caught up in how that sounds - _Dan and Phil_ , so unnaturally natural - that he almost doesn’t hear Phil when he says quietly, “You’re far too young to be sad, Dan.”

Dan is a good bit taller than Phil, but when they sink into the overwhelming couches of the coffee shop, he folds right up into himself until he feels smaller than he usually does. Phil’s grinning opposite him, talking about the courses he’s taking and how much he loves them as he sips at his macchiato, and Dan can’t recall meeting anybody as excited about life as Phil is right now.

“So what did you get up to during your Christmas hols?” asks Phil some time later, when his glass is half empty and the sun has reached the highest point in the sky.

“Nothing.” Dan shrugs casually. “And you?”

“Travelled up North, my family lives there. I don’t always go home, but they were worried for me. Said I don’t let loose as much as I should.” Phil glances up to grin at Dan, his entire demeanour shifting into something nervous and foreign. “Little do they know.”

Dan avoids his pretty eyes, choosing instead to take a commendable gulp of his black coffee, the drink bitter against his tongue. They’ve been talking for more than an hour now, and this is the first allusion Phil’s made to their casual fuck nearly a month ago.

“Haven’t you told them about all the sexy time you have with your books?” Dan rejoins after a moment, his eyes darting back up with a reasonable amount of life.

A laugh bubbles out of Phil’s mouth, but he still looks on edge. He takes a book from the pile that he’s set down on the coffee table in between of them and caresses its spine absentmindedly. “I’ve never quite met anyone like you, Dan,” he says then, softly.

Something constricts in Dan’s stomach. He knows immediately that he’s made a mistake; in the morning he had been confused, curious as to what about Phil made him dream of something domestic and warm and safe. Just  _curious_. But he realises that after all these years of planning out his days carefully, making every action deliberate and reckless and necessary, he’s gone and done something as thoughtless as this, getting a bloody coffee with Phil fucking Lester, and he can’t handle it.

He needs to go.

He’s on his feet before he knows it. “I should - “

“Hey, don’t.”

Now Phil’s on his feet to, and he’s looking at Dan with something in his eyes that says that he knows, and it’s fine, it’s  _fine_. But he doesn’t get it, Dan thinks furiously. This is not something Dan  _does_  - this is at the very top of the List of Things Dan Howell Should Avoid Doing, a very permanent member of it - Dan smokes and drinks, and he bunks classes and drops out of jobs and lives in an apartment with an irreparable heater, and he fucks things over, but he can’t fuck Phil over. He won’t allow himself to.

“You said you had a free day,” says Phil, his voice soft and insistent.

“I know, but I just remembered - “

“Go on a walk with me.” Phil says it so simply, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and for a moment Dan stops thinking and looks at Phil, really  _looks_  at him, at his dark green jumper and skinny jeans and red cheeks and lips lilting upwards at the ends hopefully, and he thinks  _oh my god you’re beautiful_.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says instead.

+

And the craziest thing is, he  _does_  see Phil the next day. He camps out at the library and Phil shows up on time, and then they visit the coffee shop and stay there for a while. The conversation dies out earlier today when Phil immerses himself in one of the books he’s brought with him - because that’s why he’s actually here, Dan reminds himself severely, to  _study_. Dan distracts himself with his phone for an hour, opening and closing all the apps systematically and then starting from the beginning and doing it again, and again, and again. After a while his phone dies, so he pops out of the coffee shop to buy a newspaper, and then goes back to Phil and does the crossword silently.

When lunchtime approaches, they buy a croissant each and then exit the warm confines of the coffee shop. Phil’s wearing an oversized brown hoodie on black slacks today, and when Dan looks at him, he doesn’t think There’s The Guy Whose Virginity I Took Unconventionally In A Dingy Wine Cellar.

And the only thing crazier than Dan voluntarily walking the streets of Manchester with Phil Lester next to him, is that in this moment Dan would rather be nowhere else.

“I think it might rain later,” says Phil when they pass by the park in front of Dan’s apartment.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Dan wraps his arms around himself. “Do you like rainy days?”

“Love them.” Phil looks up at him with a small smile. “They’re one of my favourites.”

Dan nods but he’s unable to share the sentiment, because when it rains it gets colder, and the heater at home still doesn’t work, and  _fuck_  why does he call that dump ‘home’ anyway?

“D’you want me to carry your books for a while?” he volunteers. Phil has only five books today, but they’re still thick as fuck, and surely can’t be as light as Phil makes them out to be.

“I’m good,” Phil assures him. “Used to it, actually.”

“Nerd.”

“Shut up.” Phil laughs. “D’you want to know a secret?”

“Depends,” teases Dan. “What’s in it for me?”

“Nothing except the pure, unadulterated pleasure of knowing something other people don’t.”

“I don’t know,” continues Dan, a cheeky grin on his face. “I don’t really like secrets. Not my aesthetic.”

“But I really want to tell you this one.” Phil pouts, and Dan looks away almost immediately, because  _damn_.

“For fuck’s sake.” Dan laughs. “Go on then.”

Phil responds in a stage whisper, “I’ve seen you around the uni for a long time now.”

“Yeah?” Dan tilts his head towards  Phil.

“Yeah, before we met at the bar.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a  _meeting_.”

“Dan!” Phil punches his shoulder half-heartedly, his face a delicate shade of pink. “Don’t be rude.”

“Hey, I’m just telling it like it is.”

Phil clicks his tongue. They walk in silence for a while, but Phil’s posture is rigid and Dan can tell the man has more to say.

“Spit it out,” he tells him amiably.

“I just.” Phil looks away, perplexed. “I’ve never seen you with people, is all.”

Dan raises his eyebrows. “Keeping an eye out for me, were you?”

Phil laughs, but he doesn’t deny it.

“I tend to stay away from people,” Dan admits, albeit reluctantly.

“Not a people person?”

“I’m allergic to dumb humans, actually.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Shit, Phil. You’re smart as fuck, shut up.”

Phil doesn’t respond, but that’s just because he’s got a king sized grin on his face. Dan relishes the sight, realising detachedly that he likes making Phil smile like this.

“C’mere,” says Dan all of a sudden, impulsively reaching out to grab Phil’s hand and pulling him into the park they’d almost left behind.

“Where are we going?”

Dan says nothing in reply, but he lowers his pace so that they aren’t running through the park anymore, but his hand is still in Phil’s and he doesn’t really have the heart to pull it away.

“Did you grow up in Manchester?” asks Phil.

Dan shakes his head, breathing thickly into the cold air. “Wokingham.”

“Is that where your family lives?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

Phil looks at him curiously. “You suppose?”

“Haven’t really talked to them in three years.” Dan shrugs, but his stomach feels heavy. This is not the kind of thing he usually talks about, but then again, walking through parks hand-in-hand with boys he’s fucked isn’t a regular occurrence either.

“Why?”

Phil looking at him so unabashedly that Dan thinks it might be a sin to lie, and really, it’s not like the answer is a secret. “I’m a shit son.”

“Is that it?”

“About.”

Phil thinks about that for a moment, and then says, “I don’t think you’re a shit person.”

Dan pulls his hand out of Phil’s and shakes his head. Laughs. “Thanks, Phil.”

“Where are we going?” Phil asks again.

They’ve crossed the park now, and if they keeping going in this direction they’ll end up at Dan’s apartment block. A moment ago this seemed like a good idea, taking Phil back to his flat and ordering a pizza for dinner. He had this vision of Phil on his couch, surrounded by books, looking tired but relaxed and happy. Now Dan thinks he might be losing his head - the flat is cold and bound to get colder, the floors are grimy and the kitchen stinks of something brown and rotten, and the couch is dirty from all the times Dan’s collapsed onto it without taking off his shoes.

“Nowhere,” Dan answers now. “I think I’ll head home now.”  _Alone_ , he adds silently.

They stop just yards from Dan’s apartment block, and Phil turns to look at him. He smiles. “This was nice.”

“It was.” Dan nods, then looks away.

“See you tomorrow?”

“I guess.”

When Dan looks back at Phil, the boy’s got a half-smile on his lips and in a moment of overwhelming desire, Dan wants to kiss it away. He wants to push Phil into a small alcove, an alleyway, against a brick wall, and kiss him raw. He wants to have him writhe, moan, scream. He wants something that makes sense, and sex is what makes sense to him.  _This_  doesn’t make sense - and what is Phil even trying here? Does he want to be Dan’s friend? Because that’s really fucking stupid, Dan thinks furiously. Far too fucking stupid.

“Bye,” Phil says, turning around and walking away, his books bouncing in his arms.

Later, much later, when Dan’s lying face-down on his couch with a million thoughts flying through his mind, he’s convinced he’d be screaming right now if he could draw in enough air make a sound.

 

* * *

 

It quickly becomes a routine; Dan pulls himself out of bed early enough to attend a morning class, and then bunks his afternoon class in favour of coffee and a walk with Phil. It’s thrilling, because the only routine Dan’s had prior to this one is eat, sleep, skip classes, get high and fuck Emery, and Phil feels like a welcome break from the mess that is his life.

Dan learns that Phil is intelligent but scared of sounding it, that when alarmed Phil makes the sound of a walrus (or a giraffe) (both of which sound the same) and when happy he grins the sort of grin that is huge and bright and disarming in every way. Dan tries not to dwell too much on the fact that he’s never before bothered to know somebody as well as he now knows Phil, because things are good for once and he’d like them to stay that way.

It’s been a week since the first time they went on a walk and they’re strolling through the park again. This is the closest Dan ever gets to suggesting Phil should come over to his apartment so far, but he’s working on it. For now, he’s just content with watching Phil ramble on about how cool of a guy Leonardo Da Vinci once was.

“And he made these sketches, you know?” Phil’s saying, his eyes alive and his hands moving animatedly. “Of parachutes, and contraptions that didn’t even exist by then. He had the maths and the physics sorted out and he wrote it all down, but he didn’t get to actually build anything because he died.”

Dan’s just nodding along, not actually paying attention. He  _did_  try (for the first two minutes) but quickly zoned out because, no matter how enthusiastic Phil is about the man, Leonardo Da Vinci really isn’t that captivating to Dan.

“But the  _coolest thing_  about him is that - “

Dan never does find out what the coolest thing might be about this man (he’d pick the Mona Lisa if he had to guess, though) because just then in an incredibly cheesy Mills & Boons moment, the sky darkens, rumbles, and begins to pour.

“Crap,” swears Phil, but Dan’s already grabbed his hand and is running out of the park with him, involuntarily pulling him in the direction of his apartment block. Phil continues to cuss loudly (it’s  _adorable_ , but Dan will never say that out loud) and struggles in vain to save his library books from the downpour by covering them with his coat.

“Where are we going?” Phil asks when they reach the shelter provided by Dan’s block and Dan pulls him into it.

“Home,” says Dan simply, looking sideways at Phil and searching for any signs that this is a bad idea. Phil’s face is, however, impassive. “My flat. Thought you’d like to dry yourself first, unless you wouldn’t, in which case you could just. Go home now.”

Phil raises an eyebrow at him, like everything he’s suggesting is ridiculous in the gentlest sense. “No,” he responds, “I don’t mind. Let’s go to yours.”

Now Dan’s been planning this for a while, so he’s made a valiant effort at cleaning up. The floor is (relatively) clean and the kitchen counters aren’t as grimy as they used to be. The fridge is stocked with some milk and cheese and frozen meals and there’s some cereal in the cupboards too, just in case. But the heater is still broken and the walls are still bare, and the telly doesn’t work (they cut it last week) and it really doesn’t look like anybody’s home. Not by any definition of the word.

In fact, Dan regrets this the moment he unlocks the front door and lets Phil enter first.

“You could, uh, I’ll fetch you a towel,” Dan says quickly, trying to distract the blue-eyed man from the mess that is his living room.

“Yes, thank you,” says Phil, his voice soft and crafted into a tone of surprise. Dan doesn’t want to know what exactly Phil is surprised about (the unkept coffee table? it’s littered with papers, shit shit shit) so he shuts the door behind them and rushes into his room, where he digs out a clean, unused towel from the depths of his closet.

When he goes back into the living room, Phil’s seated on the couch but leaning forward, looking with interest at the papers scattered across the coffee table. Dan stops in his tracks, realising with horror that Phil is  _reading_  them.

“Don’t,” he says wearily, and at the same moment Phil asks softly, “Did you write all of this?”

Dan sucks in a deep breath and then slowly lets it out. Then, he approaches the couch and drops down onto it besides Phil, setting the towel in the space between them and adjusting his fringe nervously.

“I did tell you I was a writer,” he says at last.

“Yeah,” Phil mumbles, picking up a torn piece of notebook paper that sports the words  _ricochet - you don’t just hit me, you bounce back_. He looks up at Dan, and his eyes are wide and bluer than usual. “You just never told me you  _write_.”

“I did,” Dan insists, wishing frantically that Phil would stop making a big deal of it. He motions at the towel. “Don’t you want to dry yourself?”

Phil shrugs. The water from their clothes is seeping into the couch, and it’s going to be damp and cold later and Dan will have to sleep on his bed instead, but he doesn’t pursue the suggestion.

“What’s all this?” Phil asks, replacing the paper and reaching for another one. Dan cringes, because there’s a bigger block of text on that one.

“I’m working on something.” He takes the paper from Phil and reads through it. “I didn’t write this, it’s an excerpt from a poem.”

“Yeah?”

The words on the page read:

                                                         _Inside your head you hear_  
_a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up_  
_in a stranger’s bathroom,_  
_standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away_  
_from the dirtiest thing you know._  
_All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly_  
_darkness,  
__suddenly only darkness._

“Yeah,” Dan echoes.

“Is it your favourite one?”

Phil adjusts himself on the couch, so that he’s sitting sideways with his legs drawn up to his chest, facing Dan. He looks absurdly like he belongs here, and immediately Dan shakes that thought away. “Not really,” he replies, sinking back into the couch.

“Want to know what’s mine?”

The corners of Dan’s lips tug upwards in a grin, endeared by Phil’s eagerness. “Go on, then.”

“It’s Neutral Tones. By Thomas Hardy.”

“ _The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing_ ,” Dan quotes off the top of his head. “ _Alive enough to have strength to die_.”

Phil nods in affirmation. “My favourite lines, in fact.”

Dan raises his eyebrows. “So you’re well read.”

“Yes, obviously.” Phil attempts to come across as stuffy, but immediately dissolves into a soft smile. Dan shakes his head at him. “Most of Hardy’s work is depressing, though,” he adds.

“Yeah, well. Sad stories make for good poems.”

Phil catches Dan’s eyes and holds them. “Indeed,” he says softly.

After a moment, Phil reaches out to grab the towel that sits in between of them, and Dan shuffles back and watches as Phil rubs his wet hair mercilessly, scrubbing it till dryness. After he’s done, his fringe is almost nonexistent and every long strand is quirked in a different direction.

“Charming,” remarks Dan amiably.

Phil laughs, then looks down at his wet clothes in dismay. “I’ve soaked through your couch.”

“Yes, because you were too busy reading all the incomplete crap I’ve written over the course of my entire life.”

“Jesus, with all this melodrama you would’ve been better off as an actor.”

“I did consider it for a while,” Dan informs him. He stands up then and looks down at Phil, smirking invitingly. “Come on, up you get.”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“Thought you’d fancy a change of clothes.”

+

Dan’s room is safe because it’s almost empty. There’s a single bed pushed against a wall, and a closet opposite it stuffed with all the clothes that previously littered the floor. Dan digs through it for a dark blue band t-shirt, which he hands a grateful Phil.

As Phil disappears into the en suite bathroom to change, Dan looks out of the only window in the room. Outside, it’s still pouring - a shower that has the makings of being both long and heavy. Dan wonders how Phil intends on getting home; neither of them have umbrellas, and taxis don’t usually roam around these parts of town.

He’s about to head back into the living room to clear out the papers from the coffee table before Phil reads some more of his embarrassing drabbles, but just then the bathroom door clicks open, and Phil steps out, and  _damn_.

The blue t-shirt fits him perfectly at the shoulders, making him look leaner than his usual plaid button-downs do. And, shit, he’s taken off his jeans which he’s holding in his hands along with his coat and shirt, and -

“I’m sorry,” Phil apologises in a rush, “For being half-naked, my jeans are  _soaked_ , I thought maybe I could borrow a pair of yours, just until I - oh God. Please stop staring.”

But Dan can’t bring himself to look away.

He can’t bring himself to  _move_ , except he can, because in a moment he’s standing in front of Phil, taking his wet clothes and throwing them haphazardly onto the bed. And then Dan’s running his hands down Phil’s bare arms and pinning them behind him, and he’s leaning forward.

And he’s kissing him.

“Stop,” Phil gasps out immediately, pulling away and shaking his head, which is fine by Dan because he attacks his neck instead, sinking his teeth into the soft skin there and then licking over the bite marks, sucking hard enough to leave it swollen and red and  _achingly_  beautiful. “Dan,” says Phil again, but it doesn’t sound as reprimanding as it sounds desperate. His skin is warm under Dan’s lips, warm and sinfully inviting, and it takes all that Dan has in him to pull away, but he has to. He has to make sure that Phil wants this, too.

Dan raises his head to look Phil in the eyes, those pretty blue orbs staring back at him warily. “Tell me you don’t want this,” he whispers, and when Phil whimpers, he knows he’s already won. “Tell me you haven’t been thinking of this,  _dreaming_  of it,” Dan continues, letting go of Phil’s arms to circle around the man’s waist and pull him closer into his chest. “Because I have. I’ve been waking up wet, Phil, like a fucking adolescent. And I  _want_  you.”

When Dan kisses him again, Phil lets him, and it’s just as explosive as it was the first time. Phil is soft and pliant and lets him in, moaning needily as Dan licks and bites, relishing in the feeling of having Phil here, so close and so ready.

Dan sinks to his knees in a daze, lifting up Phil’s (Dan’s) shirt just enough to trail his tongue along the line of hair that disappears into his pants. Phil tangles his hand in Dan’s hair and moans again, and taking that as all the affirmation he needs, Dan pulls down Phil’s pants and takes his already half-hard cock into his mouth.

Phil’s knees buckle, and Dan reaches out to wrap his hands around Phil’s bare thighs, holding him there steadily as he works his tongue around Phil’s cock.

Soft, hot, wet.

It’s a heady feeling, a new feeling. Dan has never done this before, but he doesn’t think too much about why he wants to suck Phil off, because he’s afraid he might not like the answer. Instead he dives right into it, licking along Phil’s length and then sucking at the tip, and above him Phil is writhing and moaning and so  _fucking_  hot. A beautiful mess.  _Dan’s_  beautiful mess.

“I’m close,” Phil stutters out not long after, and Dan swallows around his cock when he comes, licking the orgasm out of him until Phil slumps against the wall behind him, spent, and after that still until Phil whimpers in protest. Then Dan stands up to kiss him again, looking down to relish the sight of Phil dressed in nothing but Dan’s shirt, his pants around his ankles. So fucking hot.

It doesn’t take long for Dan to unzip his jeans and push down his own pants, curling his fingers around his own cock and pumping it until he finishes into his hand, collapsing against Phil and breathing hoarsely against his ear.

“Shit,” Phil says softly, and Dan laughs.

+

“What’s for dinner?” asks Phil later, still dressed cheekily in Dan’s t-shirt and pants. It’s stopped raining since, but (surprise, surprise) Phil hasn’t headed home yet. Dan has a sneaky suspicion a certain impromptu blowjob had something to do with it.

Well. It couldn’t be helped.

“Cup-a-soup,” answers Dan presently, pulling a pack out of the cupboard. When he spots Phil’s wrinkled up nose he adds, “Unless you’d prefer dry cereal, of course.”

“Oh.” Phil perks up. “What kind?”

Dan flicks the small packet of cup-a-soup in Phil’s direction and laughs when it bounces off the man’s head, causing him to mutter an offended  _ow_. “D’you prefer tomato or noodles?”

“Definitely noodles,” Phil answers with a lilt in his voice, and when Dan looks at him he’s smirking like a schoolboy, all red cheeks and bright eyes.

“Aren’t we too old for innuendos?” asks Dan lightly.

“You’re never too old for innuendos.” Phil hoists himself onto the counter as Dan sets about boiling water for the soup. He takes out two mugs and a packet of croutons from the cereal cupboard, and when Phil takes the mugs from him and empties the packets of soup into them, Dan has to look away for a moment because it all feels a little too much.

They take their mugs of soup to the living room and sit on the damp couch side by side, shoulders touching, staring at a telly that’s been off for ages.

“It’s a bit cold in here,” Phil remarks quietly.

“Yeah, the heater’s been - ” Dan falls silent, doesn’t quite know how to continue.  _The heater’s been broken, and I’ve been too lazy to fix it, but I also don’t have the money to fix it, and I don’t have the will to fix it._  “Malfunctioning,” he summarises.

“That’s a pity.” Phil frowns. “Was it this way in December, too?”

Dan wouldn’t know. He spent most of it on the streets, too drunk to find his way home and when he eventually did, too lonely to stay put. “No,” he says, and gulps down a mouthful of hot soup. “It broke just last week.”

“You should get it fixed,” Phil recommends, and there’s an ease in his voice that makes Dan’s stomach clench uncomfortably. It’s because he doesn’t  _know_ , that the heater is just one thing of so many, that Dan hasn’t got anything under control, nothing at all.

“I will,” he says instead, and they have the rest of the soup in silence.

It warms his insides, a simple respite against the cold of the flat, and that combined with Phil’s body heat, pressed warmly into his shoulder, makes him feel for the first time like a normal person, with a normal friend, have a normal meal on a normal night.

Then, of course, Phil has to shatter everything by saying, “About just now.”

Dan cringes. “Do we have to talk about it?” he asks,  _whines_ , really. He curls his fingers around his empty mug to soak up the remaining warmth, and looks everywhere but at Phil, who’s staring unafraid straight at Dan.

“We don’t  _have_  to talk about it,” says Phil. There’s something in his voice that gives away how he just  _might_  be smiling. “But I’d like for us to.” He pauses, clears his throat, and adds, “Because I’d like for us to, uh. Keep doing that. Whatever it is.”

Dan looks at him now, eyes wide. “You want - what, exactly?”

“Want you to, um.” Phil looks awkward, but delicious still, and Dan surprises himself by wanting to kiss him through it all. “Suck me off again, maybe, sometime in the future? Or right now, really, I wouldn’t be adverse to that. And I’d return the favour. Obviously. And - anything else. Anything you’d be up to. Except for the, uh, the feelings bit. Because I don’t think you fancy that bit much. Neither do I, actually.” He laughs, then. “I don’t fancy that much either.”

Phil’s lying, obviously, but that’s fine, because Dan lies all the time too. It’s only fair.

“So you want us to be friends with benefits,” Dan summarises, crassly.

“I guess?” Phil is red, he’s licking his lips nervously and his eyes are darting around, all of it making him look like a scared rabbit. And Dan wants to snog him  _still_.

“Okay,” Dan says without much thought. Friends with benefits - he can do that. Easy. Emery was getting old, anyway, and Dan hasn’t seen him in ages. He’s been  _dying_  for a fuck, and Phil has the body for it. He’s fun, and he has the makings of a good friend, and Dan thinks he’ll warm up to the no-strings-attached arrangement. He’s never been a huge fan of strings anyway. “Okay,” he repeats, stupidly. “I’m in.”

“Yeah?” Phil smiles then, all shy and quiet, and Jesus  _fuck_  does Dan want to kiss him.

So he does. He pushes Phil back into the damp couch and licks into his mouth, then pulls away to set both of their mugs on the crowded coffee table and then kisses him again, relishing in the soft sounds Phil makes, all pliant and small under Dan.

And Dan thinks this is a thing he can get used to. Easy.

 

* * *

 

They sit under the half dead maple tree and wait. Phil idly twists a leaf between his pale fingers, the sunset hue quickly blurring into a swirl of orange against the blue sky. 

Dan can't stop staring. 

The blue of Phil's eyes collides with the sky as he looks over at Dan. The pale pastel colour of his shirt has parted from his jeans, showing a slight bit of skin, and his jacket is half off in a way that's almost illegal. Phil looks so loose, lying there on the ground, and Dan wishes desperately for the press of Phil's lips against his collarbone, his hips, his neck, his mouth.  _Just once_ , he thinks, although to whom he isn't sure.  _Just let me have him one more time_. It’s a stupid thought, an unnecessary one, because Phil is his to keep. At least for now. And it’s been this way for weeks, but Dan still can’t quite get over it. Can’t get over the thought that this beautiful boy wants to spend three-fifths of his time with  _Dan_ , doesn’t mind being seen naked by him, doesn’t mind Dan kissing him senseless. It’s a precious thought in itself, all confusing and breathtaking at once.

As if sensing Dan's internal monologue, Phil sits up and tugs his shirt back into place. 

"Hey," he says. "Do you ever think about people?"

"What?"

Thinking’s on the List Of Things Dan Should Avoid Doing. But Dan lazily lets out a sigh and sits up, running a hand through his hair. For Phil, he'd do anything on his goddamned list. After all, Phil's the first item on it.

"What do you mean?" he asks again.

Phil laughs quietly.

"What I don't understand is why people hurt each other so much, you know? Like, this world should be so much nicer, but it's not."

Dan groans. There goes Phil again, with his bubblegum pink reasoning and his child-like vision. Dan envies him, he really does, but he can’t  _stand_  it is the thing. "That’s a load of bull,” he declares. “When has the world ever been nice?"

Phil shrugs, the sleeve of his jacket falling down his left arm again. "It is to some people."

"Not the majority."

There's a slight tension now, and Dan wishes he'd never opened his mouth. He wishes that a lot, but around Phil it's more pronounced. Cursing himself mentally, he settles for retying the laces on his combat boots. They settle into a slightly uncomfortable silence.

Eventually, Phil sits up and tugs on Dan's leather jacket.

"Hey. Want to go to my place?"

There's no reason to, really. But it's cold outside, and Dan needs something to look forward to. Besides, it would mean another chance to get Phil to want him again. So he shrugs and pulls his leather jacket close against the cold.

"Sure."

+

It isn't far. Phil pulls Dan down cracked streets and between brick buildings, winding his way towards home. There's a bit of ice on the roads, and Dan focuses equally on trying not to slip and the feel of Phil's hand on his own. Phil hums something under his breath. Mist escapes his mouth in bursts as the world gets steadily colder.

Clouds slowly slice through the clear sky above, dark and brooding. The two of them slip under a shop's awning to wait for the snow to fall.

The doorstep isn't very big, so Dan's pressed up against the glass door of the place, with its large red CLOSED sign displayed proudly in the middle. He's also pressed up against Phil, but he doesn't mind that as much. He can feel the warmth of Phil's torso against his, and barely resists the urge to wrap an arm around the boy.

Phil's black Doc Martens scuff against the pavement as he kicks them back and forth.

"I love the snow," he says, and more mist flies into the air.

"It's a blanket for the dead," Dan says, grinning because he knows Phil hates him when he gets all pretentious, even if it’s for the irony. As if on cue, Phil rolls his eyes.

"That makes it sound morbid. And pretentious."

"It is,” says Dan, pleased.

He fishes a cigarette from his pocket and offers one to Phil. The black haired boy turns it down with a slight shake of the head. Unsurprised, Dan shrugs and lights up, letting the tobacco smoke calm him down.

Phil eventually continues the conversation.

"Sometimes, I'd love to lie down in the snow and sleep for a million years, you know?"

Dan watches the scuff, scuff, scuff of Phil's boots against the ground, cigarette dangling from his lips. "Yeah,” he says. “I know."

The first flakes of snow begin to fall. They dance through the air to a symphony only they can hear. Phil's smile is so large at the sight of them that Dan's practically blinded by it. All painful thoughts are gone momentarily, and he grins back at him.

"Come on, Phil. Let's run."

Phil raises an eyebrow. "You don't know where I live."

Dan drops his cigarette and stomps it out, leaving the butt abandoned on the ground.

"Then show me the way."

Dan takes off, letting the new flakes fall into his hair.

Phil follows.

+

They reach his building quickly, and take the steps two at a time. Snow falls to the ground in their wake, spent.  Dan's out of breath, but he's out of breath in the way that makes him wish he never had to breathe again.

Phil presses him up against the door in a rush. Dan gasps slightly.

"You're beautiful like this," Phil murmurs, his lips barely ghosting against Dan's. Dan concentrates on breathing steadily.

"Yeah?" he mutters shakily, trying to pull himself together.  

But Phil's already gone, and instead of kissing Dan, he's opening his flat's brown door. With a slightly nervous smile, Phil pushes it open and walks into the darkness.

It's kind of a shit flat, but then again, so is Dan's. A sofa lounges up against the dark left wall, with a battered coffee table leaning haphazardly against it. The walls are dark. "Home sweet home," Phil says with a gentle laugh in his voice, tossing his jacket onto the couch.

Awestruck, Dan takes in the view. "I love it,” he says, rather honestly. “It's beautiful."

"I guess. Want the grand tour?" Phil shoots him a grin, and Dan can't think of anything he wants more right now than to push Phil onto the carpeted floor and fuck him slow and good.

The flat is freezing, but Dan barely notices. He walks a few paces behind Phil as he shows him around.

"There's the kitchen, and over there's the bathroom, and a closet," Phil winces. "Sorry. There isn’t very much to show."

Dan notices a door tucked up against the end of the hallway. "What's in there?"

Phil nudges the door open with a smirk. "See for yourself."

It's Phil's bedroom, of course. A bed sits against a wall covered in cork board, and there's a wooden desk with a laptop and a swivel chair facing the window. There are a few posters scattered along the wall, but the windows are what draw Dan's attention.

And the windows are the best part, because they overlook a park now overcome with snow, and give Dan a perfect view of the tiny people and cars and animals moving about below. He moves closer to the window, brushing his hand reverently against the glass.

Phil joins him beside the window and places his hand over Dan's, smiling at the awed expression on the other boy's face.

"I know, right? It's like they're all ants and we're kings.” Dan knows he’s just teasing, getting him back for the pretentiousness earlier, but he lets him have a go out of good humour and something akin to fondness. “Or maybe they're knights and we're mighty dragons, towering above them and scaring them into submission.” Phil pauses, thinks. “Or we're the angels, and they're the devils, and - "

Dan turns his head to shut him up with a soft kiss, and when he pulls back Phil's eyes sparkle in the slowly fading light, and Dan's never seen anything so beautiful. Phil's thumb traces circles across Dan's palm.

"Come on," Phil says suddenly, and moves away from the window. He heads toward his cork board wall, and Dan follows hesitantly.

There are pictures scattered across the cork, depicting people and places Dan's never seen before. He peeks up at a galaxy that someone's trapped in a photo frame and idly touches it. Phil pulls down a photo of a cat and discretely tosses it into the wastebasket.

"It's outdated," he explains.

"Ah." Dan goes back to studying the wall. Each picture is a clue into Phil's mind, something that'll help bring Dan closer to the boy he's wanted for so long.

Something small catches his eye, and he can’t quite help the way his mouth falls open. Phil looks up from whatever picture he was scrutinising and looks at Dan, concerned.

"You okay?"

Dan points to the maple leaf pinned to Phil’s cork board. "What's that?"

"Oh." Phil grins and takes it down from the wall, handing it to Dan for examination.

"I found it on campus. Blew right into my face, actually, but I’m not complaining. I love finding things like this, it’s probably my favourite thing on this wall."

Dan studies the now withered leaf with the words ' _aspire to inspire_ ' etched into it.

"Oh," he says, and smiles. "It's mine."

Phil sucks in a breath. "Really?"

"Yeah. I wrote this the day I met you. Before we - before  _that_ , obviously."

Phil smiles, his voice lilting dangerously when he says, "It was meant to be, then."

Dan rolls his eyes. Still, he can't help but think, in between  _it's fucking freezing in this flat_  and _Phil needs to chill,_  three words that just might kill him.

 _I love you_. He glances at Phil, and then he shoves the thought aside.

"Sure it was," he quips, and Phil laughs.

They migrate to the bed. Phil flops on top of the duvet, and Dan lies down carefully by his side.

"I have Netflix and pizza," Phil offers. "Want to stay the night?"

Dan puzzles it over for a few seconds, but there really isn’t much to consider. "I suppose.”  _Fuck consequences_ , Dan thinks. Phil's worth more than anything that might happen later.

+

The lights have gone out, and the only illumination in Phil's room is the cold glow of his laptop screen. Dan's curled up under a blanket with Phil by his side, and everything is fine.

Then Phil opens his mouth, and says all softly and lazily, “Life's pretty amazing, if you think about it."

Dan rolls his eyes. It’s laughable, really, because Phil’s probably still riding his high from coming into Dan’s hand not too long ago, and anything he says right now is likely to be unintentional, but he deems it important enough to respond anyway. "Not everything about life is fucking beautiful,” he says lightly. “And it's stupid to say that it is."

The show they've abandoned plays quietly in the background.

"You're beautiful," Phil says. "That's all that matters."

"Fuck you." The words fly from Dan's mouth before he can stop them. Phil had promised, he tells himself furiously, Phil had  _promised_  they’d keep feelings out of this, but the way Phil’s talking right now does’t feel a lot like no strings attached, and Dan’s half past furious in just one second. "Are you trying to - to play  _games_  with me or someth-"

He's cut off by the press of Phil's lips to his own. He kisses him back eagerly, wanting so desperately to forget. He knows now, he figured it out between finding the maple leaf in Phil’s flat and falling into bed with him, willingly, like it was the most natural thing in the world: he isn’t scared of loving Phil. All he’s scared of losing him. And as the days go by, that’s beginning to feel more like an eventuality than an off-chance.  

"Shh," Phil whispers, pulling back to look at Dan sternly. Dan doesn’t know how Phil always  _knows_  when he’s overthinking. "We're goddamn dragons. We can do whatever we want tonight."

Phil's fingers play with the space between Dan's shirt and his pants, right above his tattoo. The light touch of his fingers send shivers down Dan's spine.

"Fuck you," Dan says again, but there's no venom in the statement. He pushes Phil onto his back and moves on top of him. He bites at Phil's lower lip slightly, and Phil groans.

"Oh my God, Dan. One of these days, you're going to ruin me."

Dan wants to smirk light-heartedly but his mouth won’t cooperate, already protesting being away from Phil’s for too long, so he when he looks down at Phil his eyes are probably dark, his expression most definitely unreadable. "Good,” he says, and leans in.

He goes slowly at first, determined to trace every inch of Phil's body and make it his own. Their first time had been rushed and adrenaline filled.This time, Dan is determined to make it last longer. This time, he's allowed to explore.

He moves his mouth to Phil's neck, sucking and biting at the pale skin. Who cares whether anyone sees a mark? They'll know Phil is, has been, and will always be Dan's. Phil arches his back in pleasure, and Dan smiles.

He shifts his hands to Phil's hips, fingertips slipping under the waistband of the boy's pants.

"May I?" he asks. Phil nods, voice breathless and pupils blown wide when he says, "Oh, God yes."

He slowly moves the garment off and wraps his fingers around him. Phil bucks his hips, even the slightest touch from Dan causing him to fall apart so completely. Even here, in the dim light from the streets below, he feels like a thousand suns, fiery and warm and so, so beautiful. Dan sits still for a moment, wanting this second to last forever.

It's hard not to want when Phil's practically melting under his fingers, moaning his name and bucking his hips wantonly, like he’s lost control of his body. Like  _Dan’s_  made him all hard and desperate and aching.

"Fuck," he murmurs, because seeing Phil as an unwound, blushing mess is the biggest turn on he's ever had. He’ll probably never be able to get it up for anyone else, ever again, and it’s a testimony to the heat of the moment that he doesn’t give a fuck about that.

Phil grabs Dan's hips and pulls him down so that their erections press against each other. Dan pushes forward and Phil cries out, and Dan grunts because he feels it too, the sweet relief of friction. He bucks his hips, giving Phil just enough contact so that he's happy for a moment, but soon the boy can't take it anymore.

"Dan, God, please," he gasps, pushing upwards, and Dan had to bite down on his lip to ground himself.

"What do you want me to do?"

As he says this, Dan moves Phil's hands above his head, so that he can't do anything but beg. He keeps his grip light so that Phil can wriggle free should he please, but Dan hears him inhale sharply and smirks to himself, satisfied at getting it right.

"I want you to fuck me. Oh, god, please, Dan.” His hips buck up at meet nothing but air, and when he whines then, Dan sees white. “I want you to fuck me so hard I can't walk straight."

Dan grins and kisses him again, long and slow and deliberate. Phil moves impatiently under him, desperate for some sort of attention.

"Dan, now,  _please_." Even like this, spread out and wanting, Phil still has the ability to command him. Dan rolls his eyes.

"Impatient little fucker, aren't you?"

He's being a hypocrite, of course. Every muscle in his body is screaming out at him to fuck Phil, to get inside him, to make the other boy scream with pleasure. Dan can barely resist it any longer.

Phil hurriedly hands him a bottle of lube from the bedside table. "Hurry the fuck up," he almost growls, and Dan's fragile resistance breaks all together.

There's no time for examination or exploration now. They explode into two frenzied bodies, barely able to contain their lust for one another. Dan teases two fingers around his hole, and then slowly thrusts them in, frantically kissing him as he does so.

"No time," Phil hisses. "Come on."

So Dan does. He replaces his fingers with his hard cock, gasping at how wonderfully tight Phil is around him. Almost immediately, Phil grabs at Dan, pulling him up and all the way in. Dan moans, undone, and pulls back to thrust in again, and he must have done something right because Phil practically screams his name into the pillow, following it up with a couple of broken whimpers. He moves his hips in time with Dan now, his voice spitting a heavenly chorus of profanities - "Fuck! Fuck, oh my god, Dan, please."

Dan's no better off. He's practically spent as he grabs Phil's hips and thrusts inward again, moaning at the sensation he’s given at that.

"Jesus Christ, Phil, you're so fucking hot. Fuck."

"Close," Phil warns, quiet now, and Dan can feel the white hot flame building up inside him as well.

"Want me to stop?" he asks, and Phil moves his hips so that he has to thrust in again.

"Don't ever fucking stop," he breathes, and his voice sends Dan over the edge.

He comes in an explosion of sound. Phil's not far after him, coming into the bedsheets with a yell.

"Damn," Dan breathes as he comes down off his euphoric high.

"Yeah," Phil mutters, a slow and appreciative grin on his face. "Damn."

+

Afterwards, Phil sits up gingerly amidst the mess they've made.

"I feel disgusting."

"Wow," Dan murmurs, exhausted. "Was I really that bad?"

"Shut up." Phil kisses him deeply, lazily, and Dan sighs. All he wants is to stay in bed with Phil forever, curled up around him like this, his nose buried in his soft dark hair.

"You're beautiful," he mutters when Phil pulls away, and the other boy laughs. Wide blue eyes smile playfully out at him, and Dan can't help the matching grin that rises to his face.

"Bullshit. Okay, I'm gonna go take a shower now." Phil slowly begins to stand, ruffling his mussed hair back into place.

Dan knows he's in too deep. He knows one day Phil's going to ruin him, and he'll be left alone in the dust, searching for a reason why. He knows Phil will destroy him, or that he'll destroy himself because of Phil.

But fuck eventualities.

"Can I join you?" he asks, hoping he doesn't sound too needy.

 _I love you_ , he thinks.  _I love you I love you I love you_.

"Sure."

Phil shoots him an exaggerated grin, and signals with his fingers that Dan should follow him. There's a cocky tilt to his smile that makes Dan roll his eyes.

"Fuck you," is what he says.

 _I love you, Phil Lester_ , is what he thinks.

"Please do," Phil laughs, and then he's gone.

Dan follows after, because he can't do anything else. He's too far gone to even consider leaving Phil's side.

+

In the shower, they press closer than is actually necessary, basking in the presence of both the warm water and each other. Dan briefly considers trying to fuck Phil again, but decides against it. He's in heaven here, inside Phil's flat with the showerhead sputtering above him. He doesn't need to complicate things.

Quickly, he presses a kiss to Phil's lips. Kissing isn't as complicated.

Again, an  _I love you_  nearly escapes from between his teeth.

Phil wraps his pale arms around Dan's neck and kisses him back slowly, letting every brush of their lips feel hazardous and whole. It's so immediate and beautiful, and Dan never wants to stop.

They let the water run over their bodies until wrinkles appear on their fingers.

"If we stay in any longer, we'll disintegrate," Phil jokes, and Dan offers to brave the cold flat to bring them some towels.

"I'm risking my life for you, going out there. Be grateful."

"You're my hero, Dan," Phil states drily, and then laughingly shoves him out of the shower.

"Fuck you."

_I love you._

Dan tries not to take too long, rushing out of the bathroom and grabbing a random stack of towels before returning to the comforting steam of the bathroom. The flat's still freezing, but Dan manages not to contract hypothermia as he dashes back to the room.

"Phil, I'm ba-"

He cuts off mid sentence as a handful of water splashes him in the face. Phil begins to laugh uncontrollably.

"Are you actually kidding me?"

Phil scoops up another handful from the still-running shower and proceeds to splash Dan's face again.

"Got you," he laughs.

Dan drops the towels to wrap his arms around Phil’s waist, pulling him impossibly close and staring him down. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he warns.

“I shouldn’t have?” parrots Phil, definitely teasing.

Dan has something witty to reply with, and it’s on the tip of his tongue when Phil leans in to kiss him, and then there’s nothing in his head but three words buried deep, three words he’s careful not to repeat should they lose their meaning completely.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up in his own flat and shows up to class early for once, and does all the things that normal fucking human beings are supposed to do. And for once, Dan forgets about his list.

He finds Phil at the library, as he's come to expect. Phil's bent over an art history textbook, looking very focused. His black glasses are slightly crooked and have slowly but steadily begun to slide down his nose. Dan flops into the seat opposite him, and waits.

He's feeling very cocky today. Maybe it's the four coffees he consumed before Creative Writing, or the fact that he suddenly realized he doesn't give a shit about anything. Or maybe it's that he cares too much about Phil, despite having known him for so short a time.

Dan smiles over at Phil when the other boy looks up.

"Hey," Phil says, surprised.

Dan smirks and leans over the table, pushing Phil's glasses up.

“Hey,” he says back, and manages to keep his voice from shaking. He carefully brushes a bit of Phil’s fringe away from his forehead before leaning casually back into his chair.

Phil looks slightly flustered, but turns a page in his textbook to cover it up. The book opens to a full-sized picture depicting Michelangelo’s  _David_  in all his nude, languishing glory. Immediately, Phil blushes a cherry red and flips the book closed. Dan laughs and slides his hand across the table again, knocking the book out of Phil’s hands.

“Coffee?” he asks, and Phil stands up.

“Always.”

+

It’s the same coffee shop they always go to. Dan holds the door for Phil, and together they duck into the warm shop. Phil quickly goes to choose a seat by the window, and Dan follows. He finds himself admiring the way the blue plaid of Phil’s shirt outlines the other boy’s eyes, but stops himself.

He pastes a grin onto his face and pokes Phil’s arm.

“So, are you studying art because you’re really interested in it, or because there are copious amounts of naked men?”

Phil laughs. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say both. There are a lot of really hot guys in art history textbooks.” His tongue pokes out from between his teeth as he smiles over at Dan.

“I hope you’re joking,” Dan says, faking offense. “I can’t compete with anyone from the textbooks.”

"Well, you can always try."

They lapse into a comfortable silence. Dan keeps his eyes plastered to the edge of Phil's textbook, nervously ordering himself to act cool. It's just Phil. And while Phil may be incredibly attractive (and funny, and nice, and every other positive adjective), he's still just Phil.

This little mantra fails in about twenty seconds. Dan subconsciously counts down to its demise. His fingers twitch sporadically as he tries to think of something to say.

"So," Phil asks, glancing up from his book, "Where's your studying material?"

Dan shoots him an odd look, so Phil elaborates.

"You know, your textbook. Or homework, or whatever else it is uni teachers assign." To punctuate, Phil lets his textbook slam shut. "Don't tell me you just pass your classes by showing up."

Dan shrugs, lets the sleeves of his hoodie slump over his hands.

"I'm destined to fail about ninety percent of my classes no matter what. I figure at that point it just doesn't make sense to try anymore." He says it lightly, humorously.

A flash of guilt shoots through him as he sees Phil's frown. The other boy is shaking his head, obviously disappointed. "Still, it doesn't make sense to just not try! That's like giving up halfway through a race." Blue eyes stare him down. 

"I've never been any good at racing, either." Dan gives a sad half-smile.

Phil raises his eyebrows, but drops the topic for the time being.

+

But the thing is, he doesn’t drop it  _completely_. They’re at Dan’s place later that day, and Phil’s dividing the pasta he’d bought earlier into two just-washed bowls in the kitchen. Dan’s in the living room, perched on the couch and leaning over the coffee table, trying to sort out the ever growing pile of incomplete ideas there.

Phil walks in, hands Dan a bowl and settles down beside him. “Thanks,” says Dan distractedly, leaving the pasta on the table and tearing up a particularly old and rather embarrassing sonnet in iambic pentameter. He should definitely stop trying to imitate Keats, he decides.

“Dan,” says Phil. “Is the heater still broken?”

Dan hums in reply, not quite processing his words. He reaches for another set of papers stapled together, an essay he’d intended to send to the New York Times. It looks laughable now, old and stained with coffee and dirt.

“Dan,” Phil says again. Dan looks at him now, quirking up an eyebrow in question. “The heater?” he prompts.

“Oh.” Dan swallows. “Haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet, sorry. Is it chilly? Would you like a sweater? Hang on, I’ll fetch you one -“

“No, it’s fine.” Phil spoons pasta into his mouth and Dan gets the distinct feeling that all is not fine. Not by a long shot. “It’s just - “ Phil begins, then stops. He tries again: “Your cupboards are empty.”

“I haven’t had time to run to the shops yet,” Dan lies easily.

“What were you going to eat tonight, then?”

Dan shrugs. “I would’ve bought something.” He stares down at his bowl of pasta, tries to figure out if he can stick it in the fridge and save it for tomorrow. He isn’t feeling particularly peckish right now, anyway.

Phil sighs then, like he’s got the weight of the entire world and then some resting on his shoulders, and Dan looks at him with a little quirk of his lips. He’s about to say something teasing, a bad joke about art major and dramaticism maybe, when Phil cuts him off with a, “Dan, are you broke?”

Dan stares at him. “I’m not,” he says, and comforts himself with the knowledge that it isn’t a  _complete_  lie.

“Dan, I - “ Phil sets his pasta bowl down and shuffles away on the couch, turning so he can look at Dan properly, and Dan knows he probably isn’t going to like what’s coming next. “Look.” Phil looks absurdly apologetic. “I saw the bills, okay?”

Dan jerks involuntarily. His eyes sweep the coffee table, scouring it for the yellow papers, not entirely sure where he’d stuffed them. They were supposed to be out of Phil’s view. Phil wasn’t supposed to  _know_  unless he - went looking? He can barely hide the shake of his voice when he asks, “How did you - “

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Phil says quickly, his voice small. “You’d asked me to bring you your mug that day, remember? Your favourite one with the legos? And the bills were in front of the mugs. They fell out when I opened the cupboard - I’m sorry, Dan.”

Dan’s shaking his head but he doesn’t really know what he means by that. Phil shouldn’t be sorry, but Dan is glad that he is because no matter the case it’s still  _snooping_. But another part of him, a more sensible part, tells him that just the way he gets a tight feeling in his chest when he goes too long without seeing Phil, Phil probably worries for Dan in the same way, too.

“It’s okay,” he says, finally. He doesn’t mean for his voice to crack, and doesn’t know what to make of it when it does.

“There were so many,” Phil adds softly. “Have you really not paid any of them?”

Dan doesn’t know he’s on the verge of tears until he has to blink them back, his vision all of a sudden blurry. He looks away from Phil, focuses on the black screen of his telly because Phil doesn’t deserve to see him like this. Phil deserves everything  _but_  this. “Not really,” he answers.

A silence follows and he feels, remotely, like a young boy being scolded.

“I’ve paid some since.” The lie rolls off his tongue easily. “There aren’t really a lot, left, and when my paycheck comes in - “

“Dan. You don’t have a job.”

“I’m looking for one.” He forces himself to look Phil in his earnest, blue eyes, because he needs Phil to believe him. Even though he doesn’t even believe himself. “I’ve been looking for one, and there’s a place down the road - a twenty-four hour grocer’s, have you seen it - and I saw the other day that they’re hiring so I’m going to try there next. And it’ll be enough, okay? So you don’t have to worry.”

“You could always ask your parents - “

“I’m not going to ask them for shit.” The words come out sharp, and Phil reels. Dan bites his lip and shuts his eyes and tells himself firmly that Phil doesn’t get it, because Phil is a happy person, and Phil is definitely not a shit son. Not in the way that Dan has always been. “Look, that’s just how it is, okay?” he says, softer this time. “They don’t want to hear from me anymore, so I’m not going back to them. Not for the money, not for anything.”

They eat the rest of the pasta in silence, and after that Phil fetches his coat from where he’d left it strewn on Dan’s bed. Dan stands behind the couch when Phil opens the front door and steps out, and then before he can stop himself he’s crossed the room and has taken Phil in his arms, buried his face in the crook of neck. He isn’t sure about anything right now, except Phil feels more far away than usual and Dan doesn’t know how to be the person Phil so badly wants him to be.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes there, quietly. He doesn’t know what he’s apologising for. For being a fuck-up, maybe. For being everything Phil shouldn’t have to put up with. For being a bad friend and an even worse whatever-the-fuck-they-are.

“It’s okay, Dan.” Phil’s voice is gentle, soothing. He pulls back and kisses Dan gently on his forehead. His eyes are shining when he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

When Phil leaves, Dan takes out the bills from the mug cupboard and goes through them slowly, one by one. Then he kips down to the twenty-four hour grocer’s, and the sign in the window asking for extra help has been taken down.

He sleeps on his bed that night, curled into himself, breathing in the fading scent of Phil’s coat.

 

* * *

 

Things change between them.

Dan doesn’t know why, but he may have a vague idea. Two months pass and he doesn’t have a job yet, the flat stinks of emptiness and something stale, and the bills have become a tad more noticeable. His landlord had dropped in the other day to have a stern word, and after that he’d gone again to the grocer’s, feeling a bit like a scratched record. The sign in the window wasn’t there anymore but he went in anyway, asked the lady at the counter if they were hiring. He knew she’d say no before she did.

Phil’s excuse is that the finals are nearly upon them. He’s stopped coming over, and stopped inviting Dan to his place, too. Their meetings dwindle from something planned to something left to chance, until Dan finds himself avoiding the library entirely when he knows for sure that Phil will be there. There is a hollowness in his chest he refuses to acknowledge, and when he thinks about Phil he thinks the word  _friend_. They haven’t gotten off together in weeks, and Phil hasn’t kissed him in longer.

He wonders sometimes, late at night, if Phil’s found someone else. Someone who isn’t quite as dysfunctional as Dan, someone who actually has a clue what they’re doing with their life. He squashes the thought as soon as it sinks in, lets it slip out out of his fingertips and over the edge of his bed. Sometimes he goes out and gets drunk and chats up guys at the bar, but he never takes it to the next step. He feels filthy and stupid most nights than one, but despite his better judgement he still can’t help but be loyal to Phil.

Even if Phil doesn’t seem to want him. Not anymore.

 

* * *

 

The uni Dan goes to is rather nice. Not that the school's status is incredibly important to anyone, or anything like that. Dan only ever notices the fact himself when the discount university theater near him shows foreign French films. He sees the titles plastered on notice boards around campus, or occasionally on tree trunks in the form of posters. They clash nicely with the everyday reality of classes and unpaid bills and the fact that his heater is  _still_  fucking broken.

It isn't terribly hard to sneak into a showing, either, especially if the boy working the ticket booth is Emery. Because if Emery's working- a talent Dan so obviously lacks - Dan can get in with a sultry wink or two and several false promises of a sexual nature.

Which is why Dan finds himself at the empty midnight showing of a film with a name he can't even pronounce. Well, he reflects, the fact that this building has actually paid its heat bills is a great incentive in times like these. Freezing one's ass off is exceedingly less appealing when it's happening alone.

He stares up at the screen and tries to figure out what the actors are saying. The theater is too cheap to provide subtitles, so Dan has to rely on his very abstract knowledge of French to piece together the dialogue.

" _Je souhaite que vous me dit tout_ ," the typically handsome Frenchman utters, " _Vous savez que je me soucie de vous_."

Something about emotions,  judging by the look his co-star is giving him. It's a mix of love and pity and something else Dan can't quite put his finger on. He focuses extra hard on her next line of dialogue, but can only pick out a few garbled words.

" _Love, --- I--- sorry,_ " she says, looking close to tears. Dan figures that it must be a breakup of some sort.

It hits him with the force of a hurricane, and all of a sudden he's crying alone in a movie theater. He'd realized before that he and Phil just weren't cut out for each other, probably, but he's deluded himself into thinking that maybe Phil is the type of person that loves despite flaws, or worse, the type to somehow fix things for him.

Phil won't be there, maybe because he can't be, or won't be, and for some reason this is life shattering. The illusion of support he’d pieced together for himself based off of Phil's actions finally falls away, and the constant ache in his chest grows a little bit more.

In an overall sense, Dan knows he's fine, and that nothing has really changed, but for some reason it - this imagined betrayal- still hurts.

Sobbing alone at a French movie screening finally gets too cliche for him to stand. He leaves, making a decision to not text Phil.  To not be unnecessarily needy, basically.

This decision lasts approximately ten minutes. Dan breaks his own pact as he nears his front door.

 

> **Dan | 9:54PM  
>  hey. how’ve u been?**

_seen at 00:57AM_

 

> **Dan | 1:01AM  
>  we should get coffee sometime.**

_seen at 01:05AM_

 

> **Dan | 1:32AM  
>  can I ask u a question?**

> _Phil | 1:40AM  
>  go for it_

> **Dan | 1:42AM  
>  no actually nvm. sleep well.**

_seen at 01:43AM_

 

> **Dan | (unsent message, saved 02:14)  
>  you know sometimes I kinda wish I'd never met u or that maybe this never happened idk  
>  do you care?**

_deleted at 02:25_

It's the last contact he has with Phil for quite a while. Dan somehow manages to adapt to it. Life goes on as it usually does, and sometimes he can pretend he doesn't care. Occasionally, though, he'll catch himself glancing toward the coffee shop, and he knows that's a lie.

 

* * *

 

When he was little, Dan had loved adventure stories. He would avidly pursue the tales, and root the hero onwards as they struggled. They were fairly predictable, but Dan loved them that way. The knight would slay the dragon, get his love interest, and return home with all the treasure he could carry.

Dan’s come to realize that such stories are kind of, well, bullshit.

No one writes a story about the hero who wakes up at seven in the morning just to keep working the same shitty day job, or the hero who sneaks around back of school to get a smoke before returning to their personal hell. No one writes about the hero who throws their razor blades out a third-story window.

No one writes about a reckless uni dropout whose only real skill is alienating the people he loves. No one writes about the boy who fucks the first boy he can think of just to numb the pain of losing his real love. No one writes about a loser who’s supposedly the hero.

And that’s where Dan’s stuck. If he’s a fucking hero, where’s all the celebration? Where’s the treasure trove? Most importantly, where’s Phil?

Because Dan can’t be a hero if Phil’s not there. Without Phil, he’s a stupid rag doll, or maybe the dragon that the real hero is supposed to kill. And if he’s the dragon, then the real hero had better hurry the fuck up and let him die sooner. There’s no point in living like this.

Dan rolls over on the couch to grasp for his cigarette pack, then remembers that he ran out of cigs two days ago. Fingers shaking slightly from the lack of nicotine in his system, he picks up his phone and presses the home button.

The blank home screen greets him. For a week after texting Phil that night from the cinema, Dan would wake up every day to a missed call from Phil, sometimes two. They decreased in regularity after that, before stopping completely. He sighs and tosses it back onto the pile of clothes on the floor. It lands with a nearly inaudible clunk, but Dan can’t bring himself to care.

He sits up for the first time in what seems like months and makes a lacklustre attempt to search for his combat boots. His apartment stinks of unwashed skin, stale cigarettes, and shitty convenience store beer. Dan sighs audibly and grabs his leather jacket from a hook, forcing it onto his too-warm frame. He eventually finds his boots on top of a discarded pile of books and yanks them on. Steeling himself, he heads out into the frigid air for the first time in a long, long time.

It’s funny how much meanings can change. The cold used to be invigorating, something to look forward to. As Dan trudges down his flat’s frozen steps, he remembers a time, not so long ago, when he’d raced up another set of stairs. The cold then had meant excitement, life, and the promise of someone who cared.

Now, in the bleak January evening, the cold means none of those things.

There’s a gas station a few blocks away from Dan’s apartment, and that’s where he walks. The tired clerk gives him a bleary stare when he walks in, but other than that doesn’t acknowledge his presence. Dan asks for cigarettes and quickly hands over the cash needed. The fluorescent lights inside the store are so bright that he’s nearly unable to think. With a mumbled thank-you to the cashier, Dan rushes back into the cold. He lights up almost immediately and begins his journey towards home.

But on the way there, he’s struck with a stupid, innate thought.

Maybe he can go over to Phil's. Not that the other boy would be happy to see him or anything. Dan just needs someone right now, and Phil is -  _was_  - his only real friend. He was the only person Dan has ever cared for enough to make an attempt. He doesn’t know what he’ll tell him - he’ll beg, maybe, for Phil to come back. For them to be again what they once were, whatever that was, when he was allowed to kiss Phil and fuck him and sometimes, in the dead of night, be in love.

In the end, his irrational decision-making wins over all sensible thought, and he pivots on the spot to all but run to Phil’s place.

He nearly gets run over by a cab on his way there. The car screams to a stop. Dan spins out of the way just in time, his leather jacket partially catching on the cab's mirror.

"Fuck," he spits, shrugging it loose. The cab's door opens rapidly, and the driver gets out.

"What the hell, man? What the fuck were you doing, walking into traffic like that? You should be fucking arrested for that!"

The driver's livid, spit flying from his angry mouth. Dan winces and turns away.

"Look at me!" The cabbie yanks Dan's cigarette from between the boy's lips and throws it to the ground. The smoking life of the cigarette is extinguished against the frozen pavement.

By this time other cars have screeched to a halt, and other drivers are getting out, annoyed with the cabbie and, by extent, Dan.

So Dan does the only thing he can think of. He runs. It's not like he can really be arrested for anything. Besides, the one thought Dan can hold onto right now is  _Phil Phil have to get to Phil_. So he leaves the pissed taxi driver standing in the middle of the street and speeds toward Phil, loose combat boots slapping the ground.

He stops running after a few blocks, completely out of breath. For a moment, Dan's ashamed of how far he's let his health drop, and how he can't even run for four fucking blocks without nearly dying. Instead, he leans against a wall for a minute and breathes in the sharp winter air.

He's a street away from Phil's flat.

Slush begins to sputter from the sky in large, fat drops as Dan traces his way back to Phil. Soon, his leather jacket and boots are covered in a fine haze of water. Dan hides his hands in his pockets and keeps going.

Phil’s building looks different to him now, even though Dan knows it’s always been this way: large, brick, looming.

+

Stupidly scared of being a normal person and ringing the doorbell, he opens the door to Phil's flat with the spare key hidden under the doormat and steps inside. Everything is darker now, and his boots seem to thump loudly against the carpet.

There's a familiar shuffling, and then Phil appears in the doorway, wearing a faded blue band t-shirt and skinny jeans. His face darkens when he sees Dan. Nervously, he waves a hand.

"Hey," Dan says.

"Hey." A cold front settles in Phil's voice.

Dan knows he's unwelcome here now, that the offers of Netflix and pizza and casual sex have been retracted. But he desperately wants to be able to call Phil his own again, even for a little while, until he fucks up again. So he takes his usual seat among the couch cushions.

He blurts out, "I'm sorry.”

"You're sorry?” Phil’s voice is controlled. “Whatever for?”

“You’re the one who pushed me away,” Dan shoots back, rapid fire.

“And  _you’re_  the one who didn’t, fuck, didn’t pick up your phone for  _weeks_. I was worried for you, Dan.” His hands are clenched into fists now, shaking. His face is screwed up in anger and hatred and everything bad, and Dan wants to yell because none of this would have happened, Phil would never have to feel this way if it wasn’t for Dan and his stupid fucking dysfunctionality. “Fuck your apologies. You haven't answered your phone, or done shit for two  _months_. And now you just come prancing back in here with a half-hearted apology."

Dan's standing now, and the words come flooding.

"You think it wasn't hard for me? You think that every time you called I didn't look over at the phone and want to pick it up? You didn't love me, and I'm a wreck, and there's no fucking way to deal with anything."

"Bullshit." Phil angrily shoves his glasses up his nose a bit. Even though he's pissed off, the gesture seems cute to Dan. "You didn't try. You never tried. If you'd wanted to try, you would have." He's pacing now, hands folded across his chest. Dan subconsciously shrinks back. "God, Dan! You can't just leave for two months and then show up at my door again like nothing happened! I was fucking worried about you!"

Phil slumps against the wall, all the fire having gone out of him.

"I couldn't come back," Dan says. "I was scared."

"Scared of what?" Phil spits.

Dan runs his hand through his hair, tugging at it in desperation. "You. Me. I don't know, everything. I was failing out of uni and fucking you but I knew you weren't and would never be in love with me. And I was in love with you, okay? As much as a fucked up arsehole can be in love with anyone, anyway. And I knew you wouldn't ever love me, because you blush at Michelangelo's  _David_  and wax poetic about Leonardo Da Vinci and you don't want a broken person. You're an artist, and artists strive for perfection."

He won't look at Phil. Instead, Dan looks down at his lap, then at the wall. He tries to count the cracks in the pale white wallpaper while the silence drags on.

"You're only broken if you think you are," Phil mutters finally, and Dan nods absently.

"That's kind of bullshit though," he murmurs.

There's another silence.

"You want it to work?" Phil demands suddenly, and this time Dan looks over at him. He studies the blue of Phil's irises and how his fringe is just the right length, and he can't stop a strangled affirmation from escaping his lips.

"Then here’s the pencil. Make it work." Phil walks to the wooden bookshelf opposite the couch and pulls a battered composition book from its shelves. He tears a few sheets from the book and hands them to Dan. A pencil is tossed to him next, and then Phil leaves the room.

Dan lets the familiar lead of the pencil swirl just above the blue ink lines of the first page. He hasn't written in two months. There's nothing to say when he's useless and reckless and lost.

Finally, he pushes down on the pencil, and begins to write.

+

 _and maybe your voice can be the last thing I hear_  
as I fall off a metaphorical bridge with my headphones turned all the way up.  
I'll fall into the deep blue and you  
and it  
are now one  
and the same.

 _sometimes,_  
I sit inside my shitty flat and  
smoke in the darkness,  
and the embers at the end of my cigarette  
are either fireflies  
or dying stars.  
the universe could collapse in  
upon itself,  
and I'd think about you, mostly.  
I think about you  
all  
the  
time.

 _and it's not like I can stop, or want to stop, but mostly_  
that I still remember  
how you felt underneath me  
and how you  
breathed  
in the cold winter air that thursday morning.

_do you remember that?_

_or maybe I'll just have to start over._  
maybe I'll become the boy  
who fucks and drinks and gets high and  
goes on to become whatever all wild boys in college  
become.

_'love love, or whatever. take a number.  
I'm sorry.'_

_and I did love you, in the twisted way that cancer loves its host._  
I loved with a stubbornness and a wish and  
most of the time,  
that's not a healthy way to love.  
but fuck, I can push you against the brick  
and make your head spin  
and make you smile  
and push the clouds  
away.

 _so fuck you, I can do anything._  
I can throw my life away  
for what?  
a shitty smoke on a Saturday,  
or  
a late night run to the gas station store, where I'll sit and think of you  
and smoke.  
i sit and think of you too much.  
you’re a hazard to my health.  
I'd send you a postcard that reads

_'wish you were here,'_

_but you are here._  
just not how I want you to be,  
you know?  
and please don’t hate me for saying this  
but  
I want to be able to make you blush again.  
I want a lot of things  
I want you.  
but you’re  
everything  
and I can't be what you want.

 _I'd give it all for a car crash._  
you’re a hazard to my health  
and i want you to tear me apart.

 _so fuck you, Phil._  
~~i lo~~  
fuck you.

+

Dan tosses the papers onto Phil’s beat up coffee table with a finality that’s all too real. He knows it’s the end, and he can’t let his bruised mind pretend any more. He’s gone, this time for good, and he needs to leave before he starts to sob.

He lets the pencil fall to the ground and wipes his sweaty hands on the rough fabric of his jeans. His head aches from held in tears and hopes and he just wants to go.

As he walks toward the door, his hand brushes something else on the table: a sketchbook of Phil’s. He spins about to catch the object before it hits the ground, but is thrown off balance in the bargain.There’s a sudden crash, and soon both he and the sketchbook are on the floor. The sound echoes through the flat and he waits patiently for Phil to return, but he doesn’t. So Dan begins to pick up the mess he’s made, pale fingers shaking from his need for nicotine.

The sketchbook falls open as he picks it up, and Dan’s about to close it before he recognizes the face painstakingly sketched onto the page.

It’s himself.

The graphite lines are smudged eloquently, giving shape to his cheekbones and jaw, and he’s smiling. His fringe is curled, and he’s looking down slightly. Dan immediately knows that Phil must’ve drawn it. Slowly, he begins to flip through the rest of the book.

The next page shows Dan in the same pose as Michelangelo’s  _David_ , his right arm resting lazily, almost sexually, against his side. Next to the sketch, there’s a note scrawled in Phil’s distinctive handwriting.

 

> _the unrealized hero_

Then another note:

 

> _but hot damn he looks good as a statue_.

Dan smiles absently and flips the page again. This time, his eyes are closed, and there’s an euphoric expression on his face. His collarbones are accentuated in the rough headshot, and Dan studies the image for a few seconds before he realizes what the expression means.

“Shit,” he mutters, and grins, because Phil’s drawn him post-orgasm.

There’s a note beside this one, too.

 

> _i was over at dan’s house today_

Dan quickly turns the page.

He’s sleeping in the next one, hair askew, and in the one after that he’s laughing. The pages shoot by in a blur, and Dan sees himself reflected through the mirror of Phil’s art.

The last image is one of him standing, leather jacket half off one shoulder slightly removed and boot laces undone. He has a hand behind his head, and is grinning widely.

The rest of the book is blank.

Dan flips back through it again and runs his fingers over the graphite lines, marveling at the design. A drop of water hits a page, curling it a bit, and he suddenly realizes he's crying.

After he notices, he can't stop. He buries his head in the his hands, dropping the sketchbook, and a slight sob escapes his mouth. Lying down, he curls up on the floor and cries. He doesn’t deserve Phil, he is aware of that with every fibre in his being, but by God does he want. Anything that Phil will give him, any part of this at all. He’s desperate for it. He would  _kill_  to have Phil love him again.

An arm wraps around him, and Dan puts his head on Phil's shoulder and breathes in the scent of him. Phil hugs him tightly until the shaking stops.

"I read your poem," he murmurs into Dan's ear, and then takes a deep breath.

"Sorry," Dan says, and then his voice breaks. He takes in a deep, shaky breath and adds,“It’s a pretty shit one.”

Phil slips a hand into Dan's hair and holds on. "It was fine."

Dan pulls out of the embrace for a second. Phil looks almost ethereal in the dark apartment, blue eyes a stark and shocking blue against the shadows under his eyes and behind his back, and there's really only one thing to do. Both of them realize it at the same time, and Phil leans in, softly pressing their lips together. Dan closes his eyes. Fingers run through his hair, and he shrugs off his jacket. Phil tugs at his t-shirt, and with a nod from Dan, removes that as well. Phil's hands drop to his torso, and every touch sends a shiver down his spine. Dan's never been touched like he's beautiful before.

He removes Phil's shirt slowly as well, and runs his hands down Phil's back, settling them at the boy's hips.

"Should we move to somewhere that's not the floor?" Phil murmurs, and Dan nods mutely, letting Phil pull him off the ground and maneuver him in the right direction.

They fall onto the couch together because it's closest, and Phil's kissing Dan as if he can't stop. Dan feels like he's floating, and he can't tell if he's going to burst into tears or kiss Phil back. He's a wreck, and Phil really isn't helping with that.

Phil moves his hands to Dan's jeans and gently tugs on the waistband.

"Is this okay?" he asks, and it's so careful and sweet and quiet that Dan nearly dies right there. He nods, swallowing back his emotions.

Phil slides his hands down, taking removing Dan's jeans with them.

"You're okay, right?" he asks again. And Dan can't answer that question, so he nods and reaches for Phil.

"Fuck," Phil murmurs, and pulls away for a moment to trace the tattoo on Dan's hipbone. His fingers drag over the inked Gemini symbol, and Dan sighs. It’s been ages since he’d gotten that tattoo, but under Phil’s fingers the skin burns and he shivers, resisting the urge to pull back because Phil has never touched him like this. And he can’t know for sure, but he just might shatter.

"You're beautiful," Phil says, and Dan's never wanted anyone more. He moves upward with his hips, pushing their erections together. Phil gasps slightly.

"Can I fuck you?" he asks, and Dan nods bites into his bottom lip and shuts his eyes as he nods. This is new, and different and scary (although he never will admit it, not to himself and  _certainly_  not to Phil), but it also feels right. So fucking right.

"Please,” he whispers. His hips buck up and their erections brush together again, and when Phil emits another muffled whimpers Dan knows he’s done for.

He helps Phil pull off his skinny jeans, and then they're kissing again. It's a haze of slow kisses and Phil's cock rubbing against his own. Phil puts two fingers inside him, then three.  Dan feels himself melt into the couch underneath him, curling his hands around Phil’s neck and pulling him closer, all but whimpering when Phil licks into his mouth and their tongues slide against each other. Then all of a sudden the whimpers turn into moans, and everything becomes wetter and hotter and needier, more intense.

Phil pulls away and buries his face in Dan’s neck, and says quietly, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.  _Please_ , God.” He’s positive he’s never been more sure about anything else in his life, and he’d say that now if his voice box felt like cooperating.

 

Phil raises his head to look at Dan properly, and then pushes himself off the couch and reaches to help Dan up, as well. Wordlessly they pad into Phil’s bedroom, Dan letting himself be led by Phil,  wondering at how this boy whose virginity he had taken not too long ago is now leading him by the hand, pushing him down onto his double bed and pulling open a drawer to locate a tube of lube.

As he watches Phil twist the cap off the bottle of lube and set it down beside the pillow his head is resting on, Dan reaches down to stroke his own erection, already fully hard and straining against his stomach. His fingers creep lower then, cupping his balls and then dancing around his hole, before Phil’s hand is there instead and Phil’s body is covering his own, and everything is safe and warm and Dan is wholly  _claimed_.

“Let me,” breathes out Phil. He coats his fingers with lube and then lets them circle around Dan’s hole, and when he pushes his forefinger in apprehensively, his eyes are only on Dan’s face, watching for signs of resistance no or doubt.

“Go on,” Dan urges, needing to shut his eyes and concentrate on the feeling but unable to, because Phil’s pupils are blown open with lust and it’s a good look on his closed, innocent face.

Phil pumps his finger in and out, past the tight ring of muscle and then back again, this time returning with two fingers and, after a minute, three. Dan is wrecked, spreading his legs to give Phil more space to work with as he pushes down into the mattress, squirming against the feeling, muttering _so good so good jesus fuck Phil so bloody good_ under his breath between needy little sounds he never knew he was capable of making before.

After what feels like  _hours_  but what is probably in reality just a couple of minutes of being completely finger fucked, Dan reaches down to pull Phil’s fingers out and raises them to his lips, murmurs against them, “I want you.”

Phil’s hand shakes as he pulls it away, and then he’s stroking his own erection with lube and lining it up against Dan’s entrance, but just before he pushes in he looks Dan in the eye and stutters out, “Have you ever - ?”

Dan shakes his head almost imperceptibly.

“Shit,” murmurs Phil, eyes fluttering shut momentarily, before he opens them again and scans Dan’s face in a way the latter has become used to. “I’ll take care of you,” Phil promises.

And then he pushes in.

And it’s like nothing Dan has ever felt before. Phil’s words ring in his ears:  _I’ll take care of you_ , and hasn’t Phil always? He takes care of Dan when he bottoms out, whispering “So good, so tight,” into the crook of Dan’s neck and then raising his head to once again check if this is all okay. And he takes care of Dan when he starts pumping in and out, slowly at first because he knows it’s Dan’s first time and he doesn’t want to fucking hurt Dan, does he? No, he just wants to fuck him, nice and slow, like no one has ever done before. , and Dan claws at Phil’s back and urges him to go faster because he doesn’t understand gentle sex.

After a while, when Phil resolutely maintains his pace and refuses to go any faster, Dan gives in and lets the feeling of being  _fucked by Phil_  take over his senses.

When Phil brushes against that bundle of nerves, Dan finally gets what all the fuss of being fucked was about.

He dissolves into tremors, shakes and cries out, “God,  _fuck_ , there, right there.” And if he thought he had been a pathetic bag of neediness before, he’s even worse now. Above him, Phil shivers and kisses at Dan’s cheek, his temple, his nose. He’s whispering something into Dan’s ears as he quickens his pace (fucking  _finally_ ), but Dan refuses to acknowledge his words, immersing himself completely in this moment of Phil taking care of Dan, taking care of him completely.

He comes without being touched, an orgasm that seems to last for days. He’s distracted vaguely by the sound of Phil panting above him as he comes into Dan, and  _fuck_ , that thought makes him shake again, and everything is so intense and so new but so  _good_  that Dan might cry, if he hasn’t already.

Everything feels like a haze after that. There’s the soft sound of Phil falling onto the mattress beside Dan, and He mindlessly he rolls over to curl around Phil’s body, resting against his hot skin as he pants, tired and spent.

After a long moment, Dan drags himself up and rests his lips against Phil's sweaty collarbone. There, he says: "For a while, I was nothing. I'd leave music on in the entire apartment and lie in bed face-down while music would play on in the background.. I'd breathe into the pillow and sometimes I couldn't. I'd skip work without calling in. Nobody checked in, because nobody remembered. And I got off on how easily I could be forgotten."

Phil doesn't say anything, just pants, his chest heaving as he struggles to come down from his post-coital high.

Dan leans up to press his mouth against Phil's chin where a bit of stubble has begun to grow. It feels rough against the smooth skin of his lips, and he sucks in a breath through his nose. "I came to see you today because I needed to feel like something again. To feel like someone. Somebody to you, like I am right now, because you’ve just  _fucked_  me.” He’s treated to the delicate noise of Phil’s breath catching in his throat at those words. “Do you know what this feels like, Phil?"

He pushes himself up with his elbow and leans over Phil's face to sink his teeth into his left earlobe, tugging gently and then releasing. There, Dan gasps, his breath thick and hot: "It feels  _intoxicating_."

Phil shakes his head, his blue eyes wide as he struggles to say, in a near reverent whisper, “Dan.”

But Dan pushes himself up with his elbows to tower over Phil. “You mean everything to me,” says Dan, a knife twisting in his stomach because he has never been this honest, and he needs Phil to listen to him. He needs to be heard. “You are my literal  _world_ , Phil, to the point that I’m not sure if I could live without you.”

Phil’s shaking his head again, but Dan carries on like he’s conditioned himself to. There is something that needs to be said, and he needs to be the one who says it.

“I’m sorry,” Dan continues, the words feeling alien against his tongue, but he shouldn’t be surprised because Phil has always inspired something new in him, something dangerous but irrevocably pure. “I’m sorry I met you, and seduced you, and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.”

Phil’s looking at him like he doesn’t know who this man is, lying in his bed naked and angry, and Dan can’t help but agree.

“I’m sorry I remembered you, those fucking blue eyes, those sounds you made as I fucked you - shut up, I’m getting to that. I’m sorry I thought of you every day of December, and when I saw you in the library I’m sorry I ran away. And I’m sorry I came back.”

“Dan, please - “

“I’m sorry for being what I am, the bony elbows and the broken heater and the blowjob in the bedroom. I’m sorry for fucking you over. And then telling you I love you - did you know that? I love you. I love you.”

Dan is shaking, crying, but he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t care.

“And now I’ve ruined everything by saying it out loud, and I’m sorry for that too, I suppose.”

Phil is crying now, too, if the tears streaming down his cheeks are anything to go by. And Dan thinks fleetingly that Phil was only supposed to cry on their wedding day, or when they bought a house together and cooked meals for each other, and people referred to them as Dan and Phil and everything was so domestic and perfect. Phil shouldn’t be crying now, when Dan is fucking up because he doesn’t know how not to.

“You deserve all the wonderful things,” Dan confesses, and then leans down to kiss Phil sweetly on his neck. “And I will ruin you.”

“You won’t, Dan.”

“I will.” Dan grins at him now, and he wonders how he must look. Bitter, resentful? Is that the face of someone in love? Who cares - it’s the face of Dan, who is in love, and who is also simultaneously so broken, split in two and bleeding.

He climbs out of the bed.

Phil reaches for him, and his fingers clasp around empty air. But he doesn’t push himself up, only keeps his eyes on Dan, his eyes beseeching and concerned. Fucking Phil and his fucking concern, and how he believes there are heroes inside of everyone.

Not inside of Dan, though. Never inside of Dan.

“Where are you going?” asks Phil quietly.

Dan shrugs, slow and languid. “Figure it out.” As he speaks, he tries desperately to memorize Phil’s face, every riveting contour, every endearing freckle. Then he gives up, because he’s never been good at remembering, and this moment is something he’ll soon long to forget.

He leaves the bedroom, gets dressed in front of the couch, grabs Phil’s sketchbook from where it’s still lying on the ground and gets the fuck out of there.

In days to come, returning to that bed sneaks onto the List of Things Dan Howell Should Avoid Doing Tonight.

 

* * *

 

He goes to the closest tattoo shop as soon as he's left. He slams open the glass door and walks straight over to the person behind the counter.

"Which hurts more, a tattoo or a piercing?" Dan's voice hardly shakes as he delivers the all-too-familiar line, and the employee behind the counter looks at him strangely.

"Tattoo, I guess. What do you want?"

Dan knows exactly what he wants, but he won't get it. Instead, he pulls out a maple leaf. It leaf is wilting slightly, and there's a little tear from where Dan ripped it off of Phil's corkboard wall.

"This," he states simply, and then he's being led to a chair and the tattoo artist is placing the needle to his flesh and the pain feels exactly like what he wants.

They exchange few words as the leaf takes shape. The artist simply asks if he wants the leaf colored in. Dan just nods.

It's right over his collarbone, in the place that tattoos hurt the most. And the leaf looks exactly how it looked that morning on campus, and that night in Phil's bedroom, and all the times after that. Dan touches it a little and tries not to breathe too hard, because he knows that if he does he'll collapse.

+

The sketchbook he took from Phil's has taken up permanent residence on his couch. Dan doesn't like how he constantly cycles back to it, turning its pages and staring at the graphite swirls that make up countless replicas of his face. Sometimes he worries that Phil will come back for it, and that he'll have to face those piercing blue eyes again. Because Dan knows above all else that if Phil comes by, he'll never be able to turn him away again.

+

The next week, he shows up on campus for the first time in three months. The creative writing teacher smiles at him as he walks in the door.

"Daniel! I was worried you wouldn't come back," he says amiably, and Dan just shrugs.

"It was time to come back."

The professor motions toward the maple leaf peeking out from underneath Dan's shirt.

"That's new."

"Yeah," Dan says, and glances out the window in the direction of the coffee shop, where he knows Phil Lester is sitting and reading some art textbook. Maybe Phil's alone, or maybe he's with some other boy, someone better than Dan.

"It's quite a story," he mumbles after a moment, and the professor nods.

"Well, there's always writing, right? There are always words, in the end."

Dan enters the lecture room, and he pulls out a notebook and writes one last poem while the professor chatters on behind him.

+

 _we were such a good story-_  
in theory.  
two pretty boys with safety matches,  
lighting ourselves on fire  
just to see:  
who  
could burn the fastest?  
sorry,  
but apparently you were the brighter firework.  
you got to turn into a star,  
of course.  
you're right up there  
with all those art pieces you love  
so much  
(and how could you not be,  
when you deserved the sky  
and I  so desperately wanted  
the ground)

_oops. sorry again._

_if there's one thing I can't stop doing, it's missing you, and apologies won't make up for a lack of love._

_I need to stop talking about you until my mouth bleeds._

_because in the end, there will always be words. words, and the idea of something better._

_aspire_  
to  
inspire.

+

After class, Dan takes the maple leaf from his pocket and lifts it high into the clear winter air. Then, with a fling of his wrist, he lets the leaf fly away.

There's something new written on it.

 _we have had our difficulties and there are many things_  
i wanted to ask you.  
i'm sorry it's such a lousy story.

He turns his back on the reminder and trudges away, boots catching on the hint of spring.

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this fic (or hated it, anything works) please send us a message to let us know! [this](http://oopsiwritefanficdonttellmum.tumblr.com) is my tumblr, and [this](http://squallohscope.tumblr.com) is kate's. kudos are appreciated, but comments are preferred. how else am i going to feed my seven hundred and three OCs? c;


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